Review Summary: Only one way to go from here
From the midst of the Sputnik community comes A Continent Named Coma. Mixing post-hardcore, post-rock, and hints of emo-esque stylings,
The Lachrymose Sessions is a demo of potential and talent for the future of the band. Taking influence from the post-harcore genre in general (i.e.
They’re Only Chasing Safety era Underoath), A Continent Named Coma utilizes distorted guitar progressions, driving drum grooves, and bass both subtle and prominent at the same time to progress through each track. Binding each song together, the vocals are reminiscent to much of mewithoutYou’s discography, focusing on spoken word/softly sung vocals, while maintaining impressive harsh vocals throughout, contrasting the two vocal stylings.
As a whole, the band shows a lot of chemistry, working together in a flow of instrumental magic. The guitars take advantage of a clean to distorted alternation, providing listeners with relaxed, delay-ridden verses juxtaposed by a subtle aggression of crunch distortion in the choruses. “Lachrymose” expresses this absolute talent produced by the guitars, utilizing a progressive build up, from simple, clean chords erupting into a mass of distorted progressions of note picking and tremolo undertone. Complimenting the strings is the supporting bass, following suit of the guitars while maintaining a punch of its own. Throughout “Show Your Face”, the bass takes over the responsibilities of the lower melodies of the choruses as the guitars churn through the higher octaves, proving the bass to be a rather important backbone of
The Lachrymose Sessions. Accompanying these melody-makers, is the impressive performance of the groove-setter. The drumming within this demo is pretty fantastic, mixing both chill rhythms in the slow verses while speeding up the tempo and ferocity within the choruses and bridges. “Don’t Count on Me” displays a double-bass reliant beat with punk-influence sprinkled throughout, maintaining this pummeling fury, only to slow down slightly for a relaxed, yet intriguing, bridge of groove and rhythm.
Encompassing all of the musical aspects of the demo, the vocals take the stage in a rather upfront manner. Combining vocal stylings of both harsh and clean,
The Lachrymose Sessions shows A Continent Named Coma expressing both peace and chaos through the vocal performance. While the cleans sometimes fall flat (as most demos feature), sounding out of key and out of place on occasion, the harsh vocals truly make up for it. Taking inspiration from Underoath’s older discography, the harsh screams bring out anguish and anger while maintaining the calm tonality of the cleans. Although this is a demo, the vocals are surprisingly top-notch, producing a performance that is both well-executed as well as fitting for the band’s stylistic choices.
Overall, this demo shows a promising career for the future of the band. While
The Lachrymose Sessions only give us a taste of what they have in store, one can only assume that what they have coming is nothing short of spectacular. Even though this is only stage one for the band, A Continent Named Coma is starting off on a high-note, with only improvement to come as they progress further into production and mixing of final track mixes. This may only be the beginning of the band’s future, but they already sound like season veterans in the industry.
