### Coexistence: Carrion comfort

#### 26/06/09 || GardensTale

Oh joy, en entirely new band upon our happy flowery metal scene! Coexistence is what they call themselves, and isn’t it just a joy in tolerance and togetherness. Everyone, love each other and we’ll have peaceful coexistence! Or are you talking about the coexistence of heavy and power metal in your tunes?

Yeah, yeah, here comes another gay guitarnoodling flowerhuffer band, I can hear you think. But think back… hearken “The Dark Saga” by Iced Earth, for instance. While it couldn’t be denied to be power metal, the riffs were heavy, the gayness level was rather low. Vocals still went up front like with 90% of all power metal, but it wasn’t ridiculous falsettos, it was Matt Barlow’s gruff storyteller’s singing.

And that’s the approach Coexistence have taken, and it’s not bad at all! Yeah, I was surprised too, a demo with actual quality, even when it’s power metal! All hail the gods of metal, they saved our ears from more embarrassing highschool-band-noise. There’s some very head-nodding-foot-tapping-worthy riffs on here, along with what sounds like an amateur Barlow who manages some decent performances, a competently handled drum machine (which remains a drum machine no matter how competently you program it, so that gets you point detraction) and inaudible bass. So far so bad, right?

Not really, actually. These elements on their own are of varying quality, but they do fit together quite nicely. The songwriting is definitely one of the stronger points, although the songs do still tend to feel a little out of balance. Here and there some section transitions are a little jumpy and jerky, but that’s really the only major complaint I could mention when it comes to the songwriting. My foot was tapping on its own accord quite often, and that’s always a good sign.

There’s some gayness to be swallowed (har, har) as well, mostly when the choruses take a choir-like approach and the keyboards suddenly go full volume. But it’s not all so gay it cancels out all the quality, not by a long shot. So all in all, this could really be called a typical decent debut, complete with some imbalanced songwriting, good ideas, competent though not extraordinary execution and youthful enthusiasm. Nothing that’ll amaze anyone, but a decent start for a band that could become something bigger with some work.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: no
- Website: www.myspace.com/coexistence
- Band
- Grégory Giraudo: guitars, bass and backing vocals
- Carl Lindquist: vocals

- Tracklist
- 01. Carrion comfort
- 02. Seize the day
- 03. Twisted soul
- 04. Layarteb