As a band,
Coliseum are a hard one to pin down. Their mix of punk energy, metal riffage, and post-hardcore emotion combines to make them a wonderful chimera of underground influences, and their fourth album,
Sister Faith, only furthers this reputation. One of the first things that can be felt is the presence of J. Robbins (of
Jawbox fame), who recorded the band at his Magpie Cage studio. The album has that blend of emotional energy and atmosphere that made
Jawbox so affective, but with a level of noise and intensity that's purely
Coliseum's, merging to create what could've been the burliest record to come out of the D.C. scene had
Coliseum been around in another era (and lived about 600 miles east). This feeling really comes through on relatively laid-back songs like "Under the Blood of the Moon," where the band really takes the time to create some spaciousness instead of pounding the listener into submission. Sure, it might be hard to compare
Coliseum to the indie giants of yesteryear, and plenty of those old post-hardcore bands had plenty of weight to their sound, but none of them could deliver a furious riff-fest like the album's closing track, "Fuzzbang," where the band rides one fuzzed-out guitar lick until the wheels fall off in a gloriously psychedelic way. What's really impressive, though, isn't that the band can do spacious or aggressive or psychedelic, it's that they can somehow find a way to cram it all into one album and make it work without feeling muddled or diminished in any way. It's this magical quality that sets
Coliseum, and
Sister Faith, apart from the rest of the pack. ~ Gregory Heaney