Coexistence began as an internet collaboration between a dude in France and another in Sweden, who wrote and then shared (emailed) pieces of the songs that ultimately came to comprise Carrion Comfort, their demo EP. This introduction to the band includes four songs in the progressive metal vein that carry a little more weight than a lot of proggy stuff. The band could probably be slotted in next to Symphony X or maybe Evergrey, though the smoothness of the melodies and harmonies makes Threshold and Shadow Gallery the more appropriate references.
Carrion Comfort’s songwriting is focused on melody and bombast and pulls a good lot from the prog-metal bag-o-tricks, resulting in some reliable if rather indistinguishable tunes. There are exciting moments enough, such as the guitar and keyboard soloing in “Twisted Soul,” but by the time the disc stops spinning, the similarity of the songs tends to wash the highlights away. As an example, after a few listens, the pre-chorus of “Seize the Day” began to regularly trigger the chorus of closer “Layarteb” in my head. That’s irritating.
Individually, the instruments sport suitably robust tone but the overall sound suffers from an air of incompleteness, as if often times there is an instrument (e.g., a second guitar) missing from the mix. This contributes to the overriding sense that Carrion Comfort is a hodgepodge of musical bits and pieces, rather than a group of cohesive songs.
It certainly isn’t an odd thing these days for musicians to work together via the web (it is worldwide, after all), but it seems there is the danger of jeopardizing the human factor with such an approach; that certain chemistry that happens when people work closely together. And that may be the real trouble with the album. Although it isn’t terribly disjointed, Carrion Comfort would surely benefit from more live interaction between its creators. Remembering that this is a demo, I’m going to chalk up its shortcomings to pragmatics and predict that future efforts from Coexistence will better reflect their potential.
