Prepare yourself for a supercharged dose of hardcore riffing, machine gun grooves, killer bass, and sweet growls in this debut Coma Beach album, The Scapegoat’s Agony.
Coma Beach is a hardcore rock band from Würzburg, Germany, and naming Sex Pistols, The Cure, and Joy Division among their list of influences should give you a clear indication to the punk direction of the band’s sound, that never veers away from a melodic, tangible core, making their music challenging, rocking, and very compelling little pieces of pure rock.
The themes of the band’s music, lyrics, and imagery are, in their own words, shock, chaos, pain, rage, and isolation… a deadly recipe for sure. The band’s topics are often existential, disturbingly so, but the tightness of the music, and the ultra-unique vocals from frontman B. Kafka make the music inviting and intriguing. The songs basically follow a simple, working formula; come up with a couple of riffs, add lyrics, a whiff of tight drums, a hint of meaty bass, and voilà, and it works most of the time. The band’s music is certainly far from being this simple, often uses philosophical imageries, alludes to classic literature from the bleak libraries of Samuel Beckett and Douglas Adams, creating with them lyrical themes that are deep and thought-provoking, while maintaining an entirely bleak outlook.
The rhythm guitars from M. Blunt are consistently thick and harsh with distortion, the riffs tend to be rocking power chords for most of the time, and with bass lines that basically follow these chords in a pure punk fashion, the drums are also mostly simplistic, but with a heavy hand and a Hail Mary attitude, they manage to push a massive amount of air and fill the mix quite confidently, while all of this simplicity is adorned by Captain A. Fear’s noisy, intimidating, shredded solos, and of course, Kafka’s vocal delivery. An unforgettable husky growl is Kafka’s vocal timbre, adding a unique spin on the tight sound, giving it an edge of unpredictable danger. The vocals easily called to my mind those of the late Keith Flint of Prodigy.
The Scapegoat’s Agony is a demanding listen by all accounts, but for lovers of punk and hardcore, then this experience will be a breeze… figuratively. The consistently tight and coherent mixes, with their pronounced scooped-mids sound are invigorating, the performances across the board are juicy and rich, and the sound of the band, courtesy of literary lyrics, unique vocals, and hazardous solo tones all make The Scapegoat’s Agony an extremely promising debut.
