Coalesce
Ox
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The people who bitch about selling out because someone sold a few more records than the 25 permitted by their set of ever-changing Extreme Music Rules are usually the same people bitching about bands getting back together. No, wait—that’s everyone. Ironically, the sellout crowd’s bitching intensifies when said reunited outfit can’t tour near their backwater burgh, allowing them to attend, miserably, with arms folded, before going home to whine about it on the interweb. These are usually the same people who don’t have—or have an understanding of—the responsibilities some have outside of music. To others, though, it’s better to have a band around balancing writing, recording and sporadic touring with family, mortgages and post-grad work, as opposed to not having them around at all. (Unless it’s Destruction, because they’ve been pretty wack since reuniting.) That being said, I’m happy to have Coalesce back. They won’t release an album a year and won’t spend nine of the next 12 months in a van, but after listening to Ox, I can only say that however they’re balancing this music thing with that life thing, it’s fucking working.
“The Plot Against My Love” “The Villain We Won’t Deny” and “Questions to Root Out Fools” are classic Coalesce circa Give Them Rope—hard-hitting and raucous, with Sean Ingram’s unmistakable howl, prizefighter-punch rhythms and delightfully circuitous/venomous pull-off riffs. Those, along with soon-to-be down front anthems like “Dead Is Dead” and “New Voids in One’s [4]Resolve” illustrate that even if you’re not living in a stinky van, there’s a certain something that never goes away. However, it’s the expansion of the midwest quartet’s palette that pushes Ox towards being a monumental piece of stand-the-test-of-time kickassery.
The doomy foundation of “The Comedian in Question” is shocked by some clean singing. No, not good cop metalcore bawling—more like a coherent, sober and baritone Ozzy guest spot. “Wild Ox Moan” is countrified, complete with slide guitars and sideways stop-on-a-dime riffs, but Coalesce’s country is more like an angry bullhorn violating your nethers instead of chicks in Daisy Dukes dancing on a bar. “Designed to Break a Man” brings a sort of caustic funk; imagine old, old, old RHCP and porn flick, wah-wah guitars crossed with Dillinger noisecore, while “In My Wake, for My Own” utilizes chanting alongside the band’s unmistakable rhythmic accents.
Sean Ingram once told me during an interview that the groovier turn Coalesce took on 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening was due in large part to guitarist Jes Steineger exploring the ’70s riffology he discovered doing the Led Zep cover album There Is Nothing New Under the Sun. If that’s the case, then Ox is the sound of the entire band bathed in flashing strobe light glow, gathered ’round a milk crate of vinyl records found in the “25 Cents or Less” bin at their local thrift store. And making perfect sense of it.
—Kevin Stewart-Panko