With the Ox releases, Coalesce grew up and embraced its home
Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.
While other aggressive bands flirt with chaos, Coalesce’s discography is a riot of sonic disorder, destroying everything in its path at the same time that it unravels itself. But it wasn’t until the band released Ox and the companion OXEP that Coalesce fully embraced its dustbowl environs.
Metalcore (or what passes as metalcore) bands’ merchandise is now a major decorating and fiscal force at Hot Topic, so it’s not surprising that the moniker has become a dirty word. But, at its roots, metalcore combines the verve and self-awareness of hardcore punk with metal’s technical proficiency—a combination both inevitable and invaluable. Throughout the ’80s, metal heads and hardcore kids often didn’t get along, despite, or possibly because, anger is a central force in both genres. Then bands like Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front opened the floodgates, making hardcore more abrasive by utilizing the speed and amplification of thrash. Coalesce has never been too concerned with playing fast, but this combination of hardcore’s energy with metal’s striving for technical progression is the center of gravity for this epic Kansas City band.
Coalesce formed in 1994, and, throughout the first half of its career, the quartet constantly veered toward implosion. Original drummer Jim Redd quit after a heinous tour that made him hate the hardcore scene. Bassist Stacy Hilt left after a particularly gnarly gig that involved Jes Steineger smashing his guitar to pieces and James Dewees throwing his floor tom into the crowd, injuring at least one fan. Amid this chaos, Coalesce released some of the most influential and profound metalcore albums in existence. Sean Ingram’s barrel-chested roars; Nathan Ellis’ simultaneously dexterous and crushing bass playing; Dewees’ manic percussion; and Steineger’s Jimi Hendrix-on-bath-salts guitar work: Coalesce is in its own world.
Give Them Rope came out in 1997, and Coalesce recorded Functioning On Impatience that same year. While the former is Coalesce in its most chaotic state, Functioning On Impatience is a shape-shifting mass of pandemonium glued together with nervous energy. Like an orgasm that releases mercury instead of dopamine, these records blaze a swath through the brain.
During the next two years, Coalesce played a flurry of wild shows. Then, following a 1999 tour when Steineger carried around a brown bag of bibles and obsessively read them instead of interacting with his bandmates, Coalesce broke up. Having recently signed to Relapse, however, the band was legally obligated to put out an album, so Coalesce recorded 0:12 Revolution In Just Listening, which showcases beautifully trashy Southern riffs amid noisy and oddly timed metalcore.
In the late ’90s, the members of Coalesce were just kids with strong personalities, so of course shit got out of control. After a much-needed break from each other, as well as time to grow as individuals, Coalesce reformed in 2005 with Jason Richardson on drums and soon started writing Salt And Passage (2007), a two-song EP that intermixes Coalesce’s signature math-professor layouts with a newfound heaviness in the form of Richardson’s bulldozer percussion. If Dale Crover of The Melvins and Damon Che of Don Caballero had a bastard child, it would be Nathan Richardson.
Now approaching the music and each other as adults, Ingram, Steineger, Ellis, and Richardson started work on what might be the band’s finest recordings: Ox and OXEP (2009), which function as sides of the same coin. The Ox recordings mirror Coalesce’s home state in the form of sparse Western interludes while retaining the band’s electrified intensity. In many coming-of-age stories, one hallmark of the protagonist’s maturity is when they start to understand how their home has shaped them and learn to cherish those qualities. The Ox albums are that hallmark for Coalesce.
