File Under: Metal rating: C+ tracks 1. Mother Night Revisited 2. Layover 3. Night Soil 4. Stolen Breath 5. One Constant Volume 6. Black Den 7. Cables Hum Overhead 8. Citizen 9. The Octopus 10. Covered In Lights 11. Capsule Hotel 12. Dim Light District related links Premonitions of War Victory Records

There are certain times in life when everything catches up to you and you feel as if a brick has just been thrown into your facial area. Everything stops, and you ask yourself "Alright, man/woman (depending on who is having these schizophrenic conversations with themselves), you are x number of years old, you are a pretty well liked person, good job, good "social skills", a face chiseled out of bronze… when are you going to forget your bohemian-free-love- I'm-an-artist-not-a-fighter-I-wish-I-lived-in-a-chateau-in-France-drank absinthe-and-wrote-poetry-all-day delusions?" Because, I will tell you what, this is New York, the Bronx to be more specific, and the closest thing to a chateau you will ever have is a grimey, rat infested apartment with no heat and a cranky, old woman living upstairs with the slippery disposition of being the building prostitute. Point is, this is the real world. And when you are a drunk, which is the brutish way of describing the fanciful existence I allow myself to believe so I don't put my mouth over the exhaust pipe, there are consequences. So, the consequence is: Mark get drunk. Steve plays Mark Premonitions of War. Mark thinks he loves it because he is too inebriated to hear properly. Mark wakes up and has to write a review. Not that Mark doesn't like writing reviews, but he doesn't. So, as what seems to be the norm with the circle I encircle, when faced with adversity, get drunk. This is the easiest solution because then, at the very minimum, you will not care. So, that's what I did. I got drunk. And in that instance before I said goodnight, a perfectly fitting scenario entered my cerebral cortex. So Coalesce walks into a bar. Coalesce is an upstanding member of the community. He could be described as a scientist so to speak. We'll call him a neo-Bacon? He has provided us, similar to Bacon, a method, a diagram of what, in this case, progression in hardcore can be. So Coalesce has had a few drinks, he runs into Mediocrity, the village idiot. They start to talk; they have a few more drinks. Next thing you know, Mediocrity is going home with Coalesce. The townspeople are shocked; the daily rags are banging on the door. Fast forward nine months later; Mediocrity has a baby!!!! They decide to name it Premonitions of War. His first words: "Left in Kowloon." (Weird back to reality noise). Now, to clarify something, this sounds a bit negative. But, it's not all bad. There are many redeeming qualities of this record, and in my meager attempts to be a credible reviewer as opposed to my preferred method of sobbing and moaning about my miseries, I will try to detail them here. For example! The crunch in song 2!! The groove in song 3!! And the dischord in song 5!! There are certain albums and bands that get relegated to niches. Not good enough to break out of that niche and be universally appreciated, visa vi Coalesce, they are only appreciated by those in that niche. This is P.O.W. (which also happened to be a great arcade game). And in this time of busy hustle bustle, I have no time for the bottom feeders. Premonitions of War are a band that plays what they play well. But, it is nothing that hasn't been heard before and it is nothing that is so good that it stands out above the rest. This is a pretty much by the books spazzy metalcore album. But, remember this, a mediocre Coalesce is still way better than Freya. Coalesce rules.

Mark Perro is a Staff Writer. Contact him at markp@rockzone.com.