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Coalition

Coalition

Review by Neil St.Laurent

CD provided by the band

Coalition starts out with "Laughing Circle", a song with apparently no purpose. The song is somewhat heavy and accompanied by spoken word harsh vocals. It is very plain and sounds as though no effort went into it's creation. It's unfortunate that this is the first song for it definitely doesn't reflect on what the rest of the album is like. "Winter Of Discontent" takes over with a slower, almost droning, style of riffing, occassionally interrupted by the chorus which has a slightly faster, impressive riff. I question whether Yio was listening to the music when he was doing the vocals though. The vocals simply don't blend with the music. The music is fairly decent in places, a nice assortment of riffs with a flowing melody, but it's kind of bland in other places. The incessant cymbals get on one's nerves after a while; the mixing could have been done a lot better, a problem noticable with the vocals as stated earlier. Coalition shows some potential with this recording, presumably to be used for promotional purposes, but the recording itself sounds sort of like a garage band. It could have been a lot better with a better producer, or at least a different mixer. Then however, as though they suddenly decided metal wasn't for them, they hit you with "My Time Of Passing". This is a fairly sombering melody with acoustic and tribal sounds, sustaining atmosphere with a soft synth sound. The production is better, the mixing is fine, there are no vocals, it sounds very professional. After listening to the entire recording, with this song being the last, I want to say that they should give up metal and develop this side of their music instead. Or at least consider using this as their basis and produce some kind of atmospheric, tribal, metal (very much unlike Sepultura, for Coalition's song is listenable).

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