I’m a total sucker for vinyls. The 7″ is one of the most underground releases you can make, and having one makes me feel so, I don’t know what the word is. It can’t be elite, because when an album is reviewed, that’s a way of promoting it.
COALESCE is one of those bands I keep hearing about how influential they are to the world of metalcore. I know a lot of the noisier, harsh, jagged metalcore bands get a lot of comparisons to THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN when in fact those same bands were looking elsewhere for inspiration. Since I’d love to hear about some of these influential noise/metal, noise/hardcore, and of course noise/metal/hardcore bands, hearing this 7″ was a great pleasure, and really lets me get a more introspective look into some of metalcores history.
The “Salt And Passage” 7″ contains only two songs. The first one, “Son Of Son Of Man” moves between some off-time chords with some power behind them, and a strange sort of indie styled chords with some great harsh screaming on top. The guitar tone is kind of weird, as the song sounds pretty heavy, yet most of those chords sound pretty clean instead of having a distorted tone. The second song, “I Am This” finds the band playing around with a punk feel thrown into some chaotic off-time, while also using a pitch shifting pedal to get the guitar to scream.
Even though the band keeps on breaking up to the point I can’t even figure out if they’re still together or not at the time I’m posting this, “Salt And Passage” is incredibly well recorded, and it still feels like COALESCE is ahead of everyone else in the game of making creative, noisy styled metallic ‘core.
8/10
The Official Coalesce Website
Coalesce at MySpace
Coalesce at Second Nature Recordings
