Thecityisours – Coma

Thecityisours

Coma

by Ben Gardiner at 03 January 2022, 10:15 PM

"Coma" is the second full length album since THECITYISOURS released Low in 2019, and it comes loaded with killer riffs, vocals, lyrics and drums. Equal parts aggressive, melancholy and hopeful, it’s a bitter, soulful sophomore release.

I found myself connecting with this album a lot and it’s because it reminded me of music I grew up with that was vital in forming my tastes today, this album has splashes of DON BROCO, the fantastic early work of LOWER THAN ATLANTIS, Metalcore bands like CROWN THE EMPIRE, bands that were important in what I listen to today that I can still listen to and absolutely love, its nostalgic without me ever having heard it before. Elements of punk, Metalcore and Alt make up this hard Rock album and it tiptoes a nice line of heaviness and softer Rock that’s important for bridging the gap between Alternative and straight up Metal.

Opening the album is my personal favourite track, “Does it Keep You Up.” The catchy hooks and steady build up make for a very memorable first song that incorporates all the elements of the album to become a great starter, you’ll know if you like the album from this opener. The high production quality is immediate obvious with the drum sound, which is fantastic, shaking life into the music with its naturalistic and powerful approach. The guitars come in through layers, melodies echoing as the lead and rhythm mix perfectly together, the riffs aren’t flashy or overcomplicated, but always grandiose sounding, each melody worthy of air guitar.  The titular track introduces the overt heaviness, as the impassioned vocals are switched out for deep aggressive tones.  The chorus throws out some catchy rock hooks where the vocals go clean, but the real highlight of the song is the china crashing breakdown, a strong vocal performance and bursts of double bass and the building guitar riff makes for an exceptionally heavy movement. The album is loaded with the kind of attitude only British bands can have, “Dangerous” has a certain confident swagger about it reminiscent of IDLES and especially LTA’s “Had Enough.” The guitar tones, blending a higher pitch with a lower melody give a dense sound that gives away to sections of groovy bass and a nice swung drumbeat. The laid back, groovy instrumentation contrasts the aggressive vocals in the opening verses for a memorable passage, and once again that chorus hits amazingly. The song ends with a stripped back reintroduction of the verse followed by a guitar solo of crushing heavy proportions

Coma is a great emotionally driven album that fluidly progresses through aggressive pounding tracks and more melancholic leaning movements. Ambivalent to the end, it goes through quite the journey in its 40-minute run time and I was there for the whole thing, thoroughly engaged by the amazing production, catchy song writing and effortlessly great instrumentation. If you loved LOWER THAN ATLANTIS’s "Safe in Sound" as much as I did, but still craved something heavy, this is the perfect album for you.

Songwriting:  8
Musicianship:  8
Memorability:  7
Production: 9