4 out of 5

Label: Deathwish

Produced by: Chris Ownes

Sometimes I worry that Coliseum isn’t loud enough.  I know, I’m an idiot, but I started listening to Fotocrime, which is certainly a different affair than Coliseum, and more recent efforts from the band still maintain Ryan Patterson’s meaty yowl, but strip back the guitars and drums to a certain extent.  It’s still grand and loud, but, again, sometimes I worry.  And then I go back and listen to older Coliseum, which is just a mad, mad assault on the senses, and I re-appreciate how they’ve grown over the years, and learned to incorporate some subtlety.

Still, it’s nice to go back sometimes and have your ears utterly assaulted by the non-stop pummeling of, say, this single, which pairs the slightly more grooving True Quiet – grooving in the sense that there’s a chorus you might sing along with – with the utter punked up frenzy of Last Wave.  Both tracks are quite excellent, though they also both kick into high gear rather immediately, which is redolent of a long-standing trait of Coliseum to not really ebb or flow but just hit the notes they want and keep playing them.

Crisp production from Chris Owens brings all this to the fore, but Patternson’s grand vocals still dominate, and, tuned up to permanent 11 at this point, set the pace for the song’s intensity to match.