Ironically enough, one of the best ways to sum up the life and times of Coal Chamber can be found in frontman Dez Fafara’s post-breakup declaration that a reunion would be like repeating the fourth grade. The bluntness of the remark does a good job of conveying the band’s downright barbaric approach both in nature and content. There are few other acts that fit the “stupidly catchy” tag so well – they were one of the select handful that could get away with having a pre-chorus of “Moving!” repeated over and over again segue into a similar workout of “Big truck!” in the chorus. As one would expect though, this ended up backfiring on the band more often than it worked – huge portions of the original records are extremely difficult to sit though.
Time does funny things though; sometimes it helps settle past differences, and in due course the band got back together. The standard path really – some live shows, nothing overly obliging, everything went well so thoughts of making this a proper thing followed, with the inevitable record drop being the elephant in the room. It’s one thing to ape old tracks; it’s a whole different story to write a fresh batch, especially if you’ve spent the past 13 years living the “proper” metal lifestyle. Could the band set aside their individual post-breakup trajectories and make this work?
It doesn’t take long into Rivals to realise that the Coal Chamber of 2015 is not quite the same band it was during their original tenure. The bludgeoning guitar line under the shrill harmonic skronk of “I.O.U. Nothing” packs a wallop, but it’s a slightly different sort of wallop than what you’d expect from them. Gone are a lot of the nu metal mannerisms that used to permeate the riffs, replaced with a more straightforward, amorphic metal core subtly hinted at in some of the songs on Dark Days. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – Coal Chamber makes it very clear that they’ve been aware of the developments in the metal world since they last laid down tracks, and they’re not afraid to occasionally let the syncopation out of the bag when it serves the song (“Fade Away”).
Digging deeper into the track list, further changes become apparent. During the band’s original tenure, the massive, commanding presence of the bass guitar was felt every step of the way. Here, it takes until the garbage juice drenched intro of “Wait” for the bass to rear its head at all. I won’t speculate as to the cause of this, but it is missed. To compensate for the lack of bottom end thunder, the guitars are about as on fire as Meegs’s fingers let him. There are all sorts of awkward effect-drenched guitar noises in the background, abrasive harmonizing, and even a few attempted moments of fleet-fingered dexterity (“Bad Blood Between Us”) that come off as extremely awkward. It’s obvious Meegs is doing this in an attempt to be viewed as a more competent guitarist, but the jarringly basic patterns fail to contribute anything when they show up. Stick to your weird chord shapes (“Another Nail in the Coffin”), those actually do something. The drumming is sturdy if unremarkable, and the vocals are a touch cleaner in their harsh delivery than one would expect. They’re not blatantly phoned in though, and it’s good to hear Dez (who’s had by far the most musical success of the bunch post-breakup) put some heart into it.
A welcome surprise is a shift in the writing dynamic, drastically reducing the variance on song quality. The closest the album comes to stinkers would be the two one-minute filler tracks that don’t serve much of a purpose and could have been omitted, but none of the songs proper feel like they’re there just because space is needed. This is an upgrade from the original run, but it comes with a price – whilst nothing on here is explicitly revolting, the record also fails to reach the highs that the originals were capable of. That’s not to say they don’t try – there’s a fair few obvious singles on here, but the closest to a hook is stashed in the opener’s chorus. The only reason I remember “Suffer in Silence” is because of the blatant vocal cameo. “Over My Head” has the catchiest riffs on the album, but not much else going for it, and the unfortunate abrupt ending is the biggest song-crafting mishap on here sans the two filler tracks. The most accomplished song of the bunch is the title track, with its deliberate build-up and blatant interplay of the band’s roots and new direction. “Rivals” works as is, but it might have been a truly defining song in the band’s catalogue if an effective hook was wedged in, possibly downplaying the octave-heavy idea to make room.
As Rivals winds down with another one of those final tracks that don’t feel like a closer at all, one is left with little actual memory of the album. The songs aren’t as offensively bad as some of Coal Chamber’s prior work, but even the best ones tend to fly in one ear and out the other. This isn’t doing the fourth grade again; this is more akin to a fourth grade reunion many years down the line. Reminiscing about times gone by, life having changed quite a bit since then, and the newfound wisdom making it possible to avoid the dismal failures of the olden days. To compensate, the dunderheaded magical spark that made the occasional ham-fisted greatness possible is gone. “I.O.U. Nothing” is musically stronger than “Big Truck”, and “Rivals” is musically stronger than “Beckoned”. However, it’s a certain special touch that makes both of the latter resonate more than the former; a certain special touch Coal Chamber is nowhere near to on Rivals.