Coliseum - House With A Curse
Rating
RIYL
DoomridersTorche
Cancer Bats
Black Cross
Release Date
06/22/2010
Label
Temporary ResidenceTracklist
1. Introduction2. Blind In One Eye
3. Everything To Everyone
4. Crime And The City
5. Cloaked In Red
6. Perimeter Man
7. Skeleton Smile
8. Isela Vega
9. Lost In Groningen
10. Statuary
11. Man Was Never Meant To Fly
12. Punk / Money
Users Rating |
Your RatingCreate an account or log in to rate this album |
Recent Ratings |
|
|
|
|
|
Anticipation: Everything Coliseum’s touched has been gold, from the ashes of Black Cross with the self-titled Level Plane debut to the molten Goddamage to last year’s True Quiet / Last Wave 7” and everything in between. Their explosive blend of influences—too punk for the bearded dudes and too beardy for the punks, too hardcore for the crusties and too crusty for the hardcore kids, all of this injected with a healthy dose of rock ’n roll—has seen Coliseum rightfully staking a claim as one of the toughest bands to pin down, a model example of dismantling expectations of genre confinements in that uniquely 21st century way.
The Reality: House With A Curse is the first full-length release by Coliseum in three years, and like fellow genre benders Cancer Bats there was a heaping plate of expectation on the menu, and unfortunately also like Cancer Bats, we get disappointment, though here for different reasons. Didn’t this place used to be a five-star restaurant? Of course, there comes a point when you can only push a sound so far, and Coliseum have been crafting that signature sound through each quality release after another; one could argue they might’ve felt they’d done about all they could do with it and it had reached its logical terminus. So you take some chances and expand the menu. Let’s see where the chefs went right and where they went wrong.
Hors D’Ouevre: Yes I know this comes after the bread and water, but bear with me. The record begins with the somber “Introduction,” a short but tasteful inclusion that sounds like something from a movie about Russia in the 1940s.
Bread and Water: It is virtually impossible to screw this up, and the band most assuredly do not, delivering the excellent rocker “Blind In One Eye,” instantly identifiable as Coliseum, and tight as a virgin.
The Service: My complaint here is that the soup was cold and the Caesar salad did not have anchovies. It took way too long for the entrée to arrive, meaning we have to slog through three tracks of mediocrity/small talk with the in-laws before arriving at four successive hits, and these are not the steaks this place made their fame with…
The Entrée: It is a filet of salmon with apiary honey, asparagus, basil, and cashews with a side of the familiar—mashed potatoes. “Perimeter Man” has a “Stagger Lee” by Modern Life Is War feel to it, and it transitions seamlessly into the steamed-breath paranoia and stark fear in the shape of “Skeleton Smile.” “Isela Vega” starts with a lone guitar and some spoken word by Ryan Patterson before being joined by the full band; the haunting strings of “Introduction” appear here as well. “Lost In Groningen” supplies the mashed potato component, with its punk-inflected Motorhead vibe hearkening back to one of the bookend tracks from Goddamage.
Dessert: Unfortunately after a stellar entrée we’re left with a bland flan dessert that has the taste of cardboard. Even the digestif doesn’t hit its mark, leaving the album and the meal with a rather disappointing finish.
The problem with this disc is simple: its inconsistency. Coliseum will blow you away one minute, and then hit auto-pilot the next. House With A Curse is an often frustrating experience because there are many examples of greatness on display, but damned if they aren’t undercut by those infernal lulls. Coliseum’s far too good to let any cringe-worthy material make it out of the studio, but sometimes this record either aimlessly meanders or coasts through patches that feel like filler.
I want to like House With A Curse more than I actually do. It’s probably Coliseum’s most diverse effort, and while some of the expanded scope yields tremendous successes, too much of the experience is spent in the realm of the unmemorable. They’ve throttled back a bit too far on the hardcore aspect, and consequently a good chunk of the album is left too lean, and not like a prime cut of beef. House With A Curse is good but not great, and for Coliseum, that’s just not good enough.
--Jake Oliver
Comments
Coral Gables, FL
based on the RIYL alone I really want to give this a listen. they didn't do much for me when i saw them open for converge a couple years ago, but it sounds like at least some of the material is strong enough to make trudging through the filler worthwhile
Boston, MA
I quite liked this release. The trio of "Cloaked in Red", "Perimeter Man", and "Skeleton Smile" is killer.
Stereo Typing
Tweet at me, bro
Minnesota
I think this is a pretty decent album. I like the slight Helmet vibe on a lot of the tracks.
Find me EVERYWHERE:
