Somewhere in Louisville in the year 2003 the band Coliseum was formed. The style to play was a mixture of punk, hardcore, rock and metal that will flatten mosh crowds around the world. After one full length and quite a few splits they now give us their Relapse Records debut; No Salvation.

To be honest I was blown away when I first played No Salvation. The power and drive this band possesses is out of this world. It’s like a herd of dinosaurs collides with a thousand trucks loaded with TNT or something! These dudes are on fire!

 

As I mentioned before the band mixes hardcore, punk, metal and rock, but very clearly uses hardcore as a foundation. This leads to a Mastodon-like sounding hardcore band, so for me things couldn’t be much better. Try to compare it with being hit by a bulldozer, and afterwards the driver of the bulldozer tells you how the machine works. Sounds vague, but listen and understand. This isn’t your everyday hardcore/rock band dudes!

 

Add some monstrous vocals (that again remind me of Obituary) and you know you’re in for one hell of a ride. Fans of hardcore that don’t like everything sounding the same should definitely get their hands on this. No Salvation is definitely one of the better releases in this genre for this year, and you can bet that we will hear a lot more of Coliseum.