Coelacanth – Demo

For who doesn’t know, which is probably a lot of readers, a Coelacanth is a fish. The peculiar thing about it is, that people thought it to be extinct for a long time already and then they found one again. There might be a link between that ugly fish and Coelacanth from Cincinnatti, Ohio in some way.

The band members have played in Fucked For Life and  Estuary before, so the roots of these guys are in the hardcore/death metal zone. That’s exactly what they sound like, a bit of the gritty crust sound mixed with primitive death metal and the head-on visions of hardcore. Think of bands like Energetic Krusher, Amebix and Doom. Maybe a bit of the early Mayhem spirit even.

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At least the recording sounds as primitive as the fish, but the general vibe of this band is of a bygone age on opener ‘You Deny’. Gang shouts are barely audible, the mid-tempo rhythm hardly decipherable. What remains are the guttural screams of frontman Toddrighteous, who sounds more like a black metal singer. Musically nothing exciting happens. It just muddles on into ‘Someday We All Die’. This is not an upgraded version of the opening song, and only discerns itself by some tempo changes towards the end. Vocals remain barked at the microphone at  the same slow, word by word, pace.

‘In The Ashes’ mainly sounds more chaotic and messy, which is not bad if you’re a bunch of angry crustpunks. By now the band does start getting boring to anyone who possesses a short term memory. Halfway the song the band seems to launch into something potentially melodic, but manages to mess it up with a-rhytmic drums and vocal combinations. The only thing that remains to be said about ‘Save Your Tears’ is that it really sounds like the dirty swamp this band tries to give a sonic representation of. I guess there’s nothing wrong with lo-fi recordings, but the quality of this band is hard to find.

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