Coal Chamber - Rivals

Published May 22 2015

*=Staff's pick	I.O.U. Nothing* Bad Blood Between Us Light In The Shadows Suffer In Silence The Bridges You Burn* Orion Another Nail In The Coffin Rivals Wait Dumpster Drive Over My Head Fade Away (Karma Never Forgets) Empty Handed*

Genre	Industrial Metal/Nu-Metal	Dez Fafara	Vocals
Tracks	13	Meegs Rascon	Guitar
Running time	42 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Napalm Records	Nadja Peulen	Bass
Release	May 19, 2015	Mike Cox	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	Mark Lewis
Similar artists	---

On its first album in 13 years and naturally also its first since the band was reactivated in 2011, Coal Chamber presents heavy and pulsating metal with a kind of industrial appearance and seemingly stays pretty much solid to its old vein of music. From what I recall of the late 90's, this unit's initial efforts were utterly bad and even though I don't see this new record as that awful and repulsive, it nevertheless is something that I quickly and thoroughly get fed up with. Personally I find this work considerably repetitive and the songs aren't satisfactory enough overall to even come close to feed my hunger.

I'm fully aware of the fact that this group belongs to a type of music which I generally am not into, except on a few occasions, but still I assure you that my intentions were good when I first chose to check out this release a pair of weeks ago. No matter how hard I try though, I can actually only find 3 songs on the entire album, to which I am able to connect to a little and I really don't see the point of creating this characteristic type of heavy music which for me in most parts has an obvious lack of nice and strong melodies, massive riffs, captivating hooks or pleasant vocals.

Maybe this record will eventually sell a few copies in the States, but I strongly doubt its chances to conquer this side of the pond or the rest of the world. It simply doesn't comprise anything specifically interesting and neither does it contain something that I find especially gratifying or enjoyable. To me this whole experience symbolizes a different era of music that I never felt attracted to and still to this very day don't, and therefore I can only hand out a scarce 3 chalices to Rivals.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	6	6	5	3

Summary
3 chalices of 10 - Tobbe