Coerce – Ethereal Surrogate Saviour (2011)

Coerce was formed in late 1999 in Deal, Kent, UK by Adam Smart – Vocals, James Wells – Guitars, Chris Williams – Bass and Liam Foy – drums and hey registered the name Coerce with The Worldwide Band Name Registry, still, there’s a band using the same name from Australia… a band split between Adelaide and Melbourne formed in 2008 by Mike Deslandes, Matt Adey, Karl Roberts and Justin Bond. The Brits declare on their MySpace page that they are playing Alternative / Hardcore / Metal while the Australians defined them self playing Big Beat/German pop/Tropical…
While there’s quite much confusion – an lack of information – on both bands pages and once again, somebody chosen a name before checking out if the name is available, I take no responsibilities for any further misunderstanding.
“Ethereal Surrogate Saviour” it’s quite off of Tropical/Big Beat, actually its bring to the surface a contorted, crushy and sometimes quite chaotic and gloomy post/experimental metal with roots back to hardcore but flavored with psychedelic and progressive spices being inspired by different bands from King Crimson to Tool and Pantera. find an unique path between progressive rock and metal and the noisy, stoner/doom infiltrated post-hardcore and merging these different styles into one they came up with something quite special and exciting.
It’s not an easy listening, but life it ain’t easy and in times when almost everybody is nothing but “a copy of an imitation”, Coerce sounds absolutely refreshing, they comes like a salvation against monotony and uniformity.

After several listening, “Surrogate Saviour” proof to be quite beautiful, “Hotel Addiction” for example is absolutely catchy and memorable and Coerce managed to insert many exciting and inspired themes between noisy, grinding riffs, contorted and tensioned moments. This is not a surrogate, this is the real thing, it worth to listen it carefully.
And guys, got yourself a band name!

Coerce @ MySpace
Coerce @ MySpace
etc

It’s pity and shows lack of imagination, inspiration and ideas that several bands sharing the same name, not to mention the legal issues. When the market generally and the music market especially are narrow down and trillion of products are released on daily bases, any small details matter, chosen a proper, representative, unique and catchy name is a major issue.
“Ethereal Surrogate Saviour” is a strong release, the support of it, the band’s PR sucks a lot. Sorry.
As Bondy, the bands drummer admit it: “there are at least 5 bands I know of called Coerce” – this is, at least, quite an unprofessional approach, isn’t it? In a perfect world music should be the only thing that matter, but this is far not a fucking perfect world and music exclusively is not quite enough anymore. And just for the record: criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of works, it’s not exclusively about praising something as – obviously – it shouldn’t be about kicking something into the dust. Still, criticism should give another point of view about something and sometimes it might helps to improve the work. Sometimes…
But well, some bands might be pleased by the strictly local status of “kings of the street corner”. Can we blame or judge them? No. Million of blogs, independent sites do a voluntary PR/promotion job, but none of them can fix this kind of malfunctions of the bands.
And well, I believe Facebook sucks as well… Maybe sites like MySpace are not so trendy anymore and bands don’t bother to up-date their pages anymore, but at least the basic information, some useful links are at least they can do. There’s a huge distance between common sense and ignorance. Relay exclusively on Facebook profile – actually a social network and far not a platform designed for artist – it’s at least something stupid.

Despite all the insults, I still think this is a good album and considering this, I respect the band more than you can possibly imagine. 🙂