None of us here were formally trained as “music critics,” or even as “music writers.” It’s always been a case of learning by doing. One thing we’ve learned is that it’s usually best to begin a review in a way that grabs attention quickly and/or places the record in some broader context before diving into details.
With that in mind, let’s begin by saying that the Irish band Coroza‘s new album As Within sounds heavier than granite, hits harder than sledgehammers; burns like the immolation of sanity; and seems laced with the kind of psychotropics that trigger seductive but frightening visions.
Or, to place it in genre context, it’s a changing amalgam of sludge, stoner-doom, post-metal, and psychedelia that’s capable of swallowing a listener whole like some leviathan of old.
Details to follow….
As Within favors long-form compositions, with four of the five songs roughly in the 9-10 minute range, and only the fifth one of a more conventional 4 1/2 minute length. Because the songs are long, Coroza bend them, creating evolving shifts in mood and intensity. There’s no droning here, only harrowing adventures.
The album opener “Myrrh” provides a striking example of this. At the outset the drums pound and the guitars growl, slash, and whine, collectively creating sensations that are towering, foreboding, and tormented.
The music is gargantuan in its heaviness and powerfully muscle-moving, the riffs “thick” and abrasive, the drums jarring in their force, but the music is edged with unnerving tension and dosed with mind-altering psychedelics. The vocals significantly add to the intensity — no singing here, just ferocious, jagged, throat-lacerating screams that torque the torment to the breaking point.
When the tension breaks, all falls silent except for brittle ringing notes that are both mysterious and morose. Then the music heaves and crashes, like the staggering of a dying mastodon. The chords vibrate as if radioactive; the drums hit like mortar fire; the vocals scorch the senses with fury; the lead guitar wails its long solo in agony and grief, reaching a fever pitch of roiling pain that goes on and on.
It’s the kind of opening song that might leave your mouth hanging open, kind of difficult to get past, so captivating yet disturbing that you might be tempted to just stop there for a few minutes to collect yourself before going on (I did).
When you do go on, prepare for even more changes ahead — convulsions of boiling guitar madness and low-end thunder; soft episodes of loneliness and remorse; phases of sinister menace and head-hooking beats; riffs that pulse like sirens going off in the blood and jolt like rhythmic jackhammers; and even the introduction of haunted singing. And all that comes in just the second song, aptly named “Immersed“.
By now it becomes quite evident that Coroza know how to get heads and legs moving, and how to make their music “catchy” even though it’s simultaneously bruising the body and broiling the mind.
They also know how to make us lose track of time during these long songs by pushing and pulling the intensity and shifting between phases of visceral “muscularity” and hallucinatory menace, between rage and grievous emotional breakdown, between ruinous vocal blood-spray and near-ethereal singing. And the soloing is persistently fantastic (and persistently berserk).
The other songs, including “The Shifting Sands” (that shorter song, and an instrumental one) reinforce these impressions. It’s easy to get caught up by them, lost in them, punched hard by them, flattened by them like a bulldozer, fired up by them, and brought low by them.
Discover for yourselves (if you’d rather listen to the album via YouTube, we’ve got that stream further down below):
COROZA are:
Ciarán Coghlan – guitar/vocals
Ollie Cunningham – drums
Tomás O’Brien – bass
Jack O’Neill – lead guitar/vocals
As Within was recorded and mixed by Aidan Cunninghan at Bluebird Studios, and it was mastered by Magnus Lindberg (Cult of Luna). It this Cork band’s second album, following 2019’s Chaliceburner. It will be released by the excellent Cursed Monk Records on May 20, and pre-orders are available now.
PRE-ORDER:
https://cursedmonk.bandcamp.com/album/as-within
COROZA:
https://www.facebook.com/CorozaBand
CURSED MONK RECORDS:
https://www.cursedmonk.com/
https://cursedmonk.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/cursedmonk/
https://www.instagram.com/cursedmonkrecords/