Review: Coexistence - Collateral Dimension - The Progressive Subway

Style: Progressive/Technical Death Metal (Harsh vocals)
Review by: Chris
Country: Italy
Release date: October 23, 2020

I’ve run out of witty intros for tech-death reviews, mainly because I’ve done so many this year and I feel like they are getting as tired as the genre (hehe). HOWEVER I really have taken a liking to Collateral Dimension, the new album from Italian prog/tech death band Coexistence. What we’ve got here is a band that wears their influences on their sleeves (more on that later) but manage to insert enough of their own little flair to not feel like a tired imitation.

If you’re one of those naughty people just looks at scores and such before actually reading, you may have been surprised by the Scale the Summit reference in the recommended section. I struggled with pointing this for a while, but I couldn’t let go of this feeling in a lot of the tapping and cleaner riffs that reminded me of that same somewhat uplifting feeling their album The Odyssey has. Additionally, there are actually a lot of melodic choices in this album that tugs at a similar place as many StS compositions do. This kind of melodic, uplifting feeling really contributes to the aforementioned smoothness of the album and gives it a slightly different feeling than the day-to-day Beyond Creation and Obscura clones and such.

Unlike some of their contemporaries, Coexistence trades in some of the pure filth and muck and instead brings a sense of poise and grace to their compositions, creating a much more smooth feeling work than most stuff in the genre. It has a really nice blend of the truly chaotic bits with blasting drums and softer melodic sections with lots of space for embellishment from the bass and drums. “Eclipse” is a fine example of this, first beginning with a moody lower groove riff, before settling down into back and forth flirtations with blasting and triplet motifs. Eventually the song finds itself in a much softer place with that tech-death trademark fretless bass soloing beginning to take off as the guitars take a back seat, painting the backdrop with light chord work.

As would always be expected for a tech-death album anyone puts their name on, all the performances are great, most notably so the bass work and vocals in my opinion. The fretless bass manages to steal the show multiple times without getting annoying or trying to remind you it is a fretless every 30 seconds. The vocals have that perfect tech style tone you always want to hear. The lyrics are definitely in the wheelhouse of that transcendental cosmic nature you’d expect as well, without being too pretentious. I’d say the drums are good as well, though there were a few moments with a slight off putting push and pull I couldn’t quite reconcile, as well as a few times where the double bass bursts in spastic manners were a bit too, well, spastic for my taste.

So as I think I’ve ended many a review of an album in this space, I don’t think this reinvented anything (admittedly, this genre space is so crowded out and saturated at this point, it’s hard to), but damn if this isn’t refreshing and just fun to listen to. I relish an album of this style that I feel I can just enjoy for its entirety instead of it starting to feel like a chore to sit through past the halfway mark. The approach to the (from the lyrics I could gather) rather transcendental nature of the lyrics is grounded well with the care and measure taken in the arrangements, and the melodic choices are just icing on the cake.

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Recommended tracks: Symbiosis of Creation, Collateral Dimension, Revert
Recommended for fans of: Beyond Creation, Obscura, Scale the Summit
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Transcending Obscurity – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Coexistence is:
– Mirko Battaglia Pitinello (guitar/vocal)
– Leonardo Bellavista (guitar)
– Christian Luconi (bass)
– Alessandro Formichi (drums)