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Album Review
by SashaS
9-5-2002
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| Coal Chamber's 'Dark Days' |
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Coal Chamber: 'Dark Days'
(Roadrunner)
Coal Chamber drop their third album with a heavy dose of complexity
Triangulate ghoul-rock, nu-metal and Gothism and that’s where you’ll find Coal Chamber hanging out. The band’s third album is a summation of the explosive first and ‘experimental’ second, ‘Chamber Music’, that unite into something really heavily-charging. From seemingly decorative intros songs explode like dark forces while Ra is on the other side and zombies come out to claim our future past…
Dez Fafara is quoted as saying that “It’s way more aggressive, way more emotional and about ten times heavier than the first one. For me, this record is like an all-out assault. Every song feels live and everything you missed in ‘Chamber Music’ will be given to you in huge, overdosing baskets when ‘Dark Days’ arrives.”
From the opening ‘Fiend’, this is disc that is like having a mallet connect with the side of your head. It knocks you for the count-out, each song as intense as migraine (without pills). Often decorated with interesting breaks and drives, as in ‘Watershed’, or utterly compelling title track. There is more primitive and manic ‘Alienate Me’, more brutal and vicious on ‘Drive’, ‘Empty Jar’ hits you with subtlety of a bulldozer, to the storming epic that is the closing ‘Beckoned’.
Depicting endurance of issues by the band and Fafara own turbulent personal life provide lyrical source here. It is concentrated and contentious but nothing less is expected from this crew with yo-yoing personnel. This album was recorded by their regular bassist, Rayna Foss-Ross (Mrs Morgan Rose of Sevendust), who left subsequently to be replaced by Nadja Peulen, deputiser during Rayna’s maternity absence.
This sudden line-up change and stories about fights between guitarist Meegs and Fafara have led to a prediction of this being a “prophetic title” as far as the Chamber’s prospects are concerned. They should persevere because they are on track of something… specific. Nothing revolutionary but positively evolutionary.
7/10
SashaS
9-5-2002
Coal Chamber’s album ‘Dark Days’ is released 06 May 2002 on Roadrunner
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