Like the eye on the cover spilling forth a torrent of water, towering steeples of old-fashioned Gothic origin acting as jutting eyelashes, Gaerea are gushing with cool ideas as a black metal band. The mysterium the Portuguese band have cultivated is, for once, second to their remarkably solid run since their inception in 2016. It’s a beautiful thing really, both their reliability and the art they choose to represent themselves.
Coma then has a lot riding on it - far beyond any excusable sophomore slumps or warm-up debut records, this is their fourth LP in eight years. Things are supposed to be figured out by now. They are figured out… right? And yet, I hear the birthing pains of a new era. Coma is cleaner, less edgy, and seemingly grasping for light peering through the fissured ground they live under. For black metal, this is a really big gamble that very rarely pays off.
Maybe the concern is unearned though. After all, the singles for Coma have been mostly exquisite. “World Ablaze”, clearly influenced by a more mainstream appeal, still has vigor and purpose. The instrumentation isn’t baby soft, but it’s easy to see the edge has dulled a bit. “Hope Shatters” is momentous with a piercing melody shooting right through you. It certainly feels more Gaerea-y than some other tracks on Coma.
“Suspended” and “Unknown” hold it down for the atmosphere fans, the latter of the two functioning well as a penultimate track with all the climaxing that designation should carry with it. They’re all good! They really tried to hit all angles possible in this album rollout, as one would expect from people trying to sell their high-concept art to fans new and old. If the way I’m talking about this album so far feels a little sterile, it’s because that’s how it feels to hear in some parts, especially “World Ablaze”.
It’s great then that we got six other tracks to manifest some life into the album and therefore this review. The title track is a ripping good time, going exceptionally hard on the tremolo-picked guitars and mid-tempo melodies that give the track some memorability. The song’s themes can be pretty literal, emotionally maligned from the prison a coma can be to a person, but the consciousness still conjures a hopeful tone - “My spirit will soar/From the state of coma/I'll wake once more/With hope as my compass”. This is where the impassioned vocals really do the music great favors.
For my money, “Wilted Flower” is the feel-bad ballad of the album to hear. Drenched in woe, not even the crisp double bass drumming can keep the song from feeling weighed down emotionally. This is good, just to be clear - I’m feeling something while listening. Even if most of the lyrical and thematic threads are a little too similar from song to song, it certainly does something for Coma’s cohesion to be fair. This is a very forlorn album and it wishes for you to join in and lose yourself in the complexity of human condition and suffering.
Even as the final track “Kingdom of Thorns” does its best with the instrumentation to shake off that built-up dread before releasing you from its haunting phantom grip, the album still has an impact. Clearly, there are nitpicks and critiques I can levy at Gaerea here, but the fact of the matter is Coma is good stuff - as solid as I’d expect from the band’s more average work with some shining examples of sundering, stirring black metal in specific places. I’m sure commenters will simply call the band “Gayrea” and move on with their lives, fine, but there’s still enough dark, damp, sorrowful magic here that Coma tries to wield and mostly succeeds.
Bottom Line: Coma is not as immediately memorable or outright impressive as their previous efforts, but the Gaerea soul is still here, burning as bright as it can muster from their station in the black metal world. Sometimes all we need is a little comforting bonfire to set us right and onto whatever we have to accomplish next - Coma functions well enough as that light.
9 comments
Post CommentOh shut the f*ck up. These reviews are so confusing. You give low ratings to things that should be high. High ratings to things that should be low. This shit is unbelievable. Then sometimes you nail it frankly. It's such a mess. You're reviewers got to figure this out some how
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