Coalesce

As time marches forward, relentlessly and mercilessly, it only becomes clearer how great Coalesce were/are. Looking back, this band ruled even more than we realized at the time (and their reunion output was excellent as well). Give them Rope was Coalesce's first full-length and stands as an incredibly solid piece of technical metallic hardcore, full of relentless songs that just attack the listener with their single-minded focus and horrible onslaught of feedback, labyrinthine riffs and tortured ugly-guy vocals from Sean Ingram. Improbably, the second CD of this double-disc set is the previous reissue of Give them Rope (my iTunes is getting very confused), which is the same as the original, but mastered differently, which, of course, just means it's a bit louder (I actually spent time comparing parts of songs from each disc and am not convinced it's not just the same album repeated twice). Still, Give them Rope is an excellent work that is actually the weakest of the band's full-lengths, which just shows how amazing their others are.