Final Coil - The World We Inherited

Angry Metal Guy 60

The U.K.’s Final Coil have once, twice graced these halls under the watchful gaze of our benevolent taskmaster Steel. But his eyes are all denim and leather these days, leaving me to find the band’s latest The World We Inherited languishing in the Dry January promo sump. Blending post and prog metal with a healthy dose of grunge, it’s been four years since they dropped their last LP, The World We Left Behind for Others. Unsurprisingly this 2024 release is connected to its predecessors, the third and final piece in the band’s “Persistence” triptych. Concept-driven albums are natural draws for this reviewer, an excellent choice for ushering in the new year. Alas, December ended poorly for the House of Ice and Berg, and we’re starting 2024 extra crotchety and itching to swing the pan-hammer. Can Final Coil deliver the goods to melt this frozen, pelagic heart?

Final Coil’s sound remains heavily influenced by 90’s and 00’s alt-rock with touches of Pink Floyd and Tool. The guitars alternate between stank-face grunge riffs (“Wires,” “Chemtrails”) and ethereal post-metal textures (“The Growing Shadows,” “End of History). Jola Stiles’ menacing bass lines are supported by a low-end rich mix, as are Barry French’s tasteful backbeats and tom patterns, the latter of which remind me of Sermon’s last outing (“Wires,” “The Growing Shadows”). Phil Stiles’ vocal performance is more varied than previous records, oscillating between a rasping monotone à la Rammstein (“The World We Inherited,” “Humanity”) and a mournful post-grunge baritone (“Chemtrails,” “End of History”). The newest member of the band comes in the form of darkwave synths, often driving entire songs and creating a stark contrast to the guitar-driven tracks (“By Starlight,” “Stay With Me”).

FINAL COIL – The World We Inherited by Sliptrick Records

TWWI’s opening three-song salvo wastes no time in showcasing Final Coil’s strengths. “The World We Inherited” is an excellent example of the band’s maturing sensibilities, taking the right amount of time to add slithering chromatic melodies and panned chugs to a piano line plucked from their previous album. By the time the full band arrives the listener is fully immersed in Final Coil’s dystopian soundscape, a textbook example of crafting an opening track with intention. “Wires” contains one of the album’s catchiest choruses and “Chemtrails” features headbangable riffs and leads doing battle with a growling, growing morass of synth waves. There’s an immediacy to the fury exhibited on these three tracks, with the band covering relatively little runtime—11 minutes or so—and wisely refraining from the meandering so common to both post and prog acts.

But album construction is just as important as song construction, and the U-shaped flow of TWWI makes for a tricky listen on the first pass. The middle tracks (4-8) only make up about half of the album’s runtime, but because they spend nearly all of it languishing in the shadowy atmospheric world of post-metal, they feel a good deal longer than that. The immediacy of the opening gives way to a sense of wandering, and the band hang on patterns a little too long. The lack of burly guitar riffs—“Out of Sorts” being an exception—in this stretch is made all the more glaring by the embarrassment of riches that came before. Make no mistake, these songs are still well crafted, from the lonely darkwave of “Stay With Me” to the theatrical Pink Floyd turn on “Purify.” The band manage to reclaim their sharpened edge on late album banger “Humanity” and close the curtain on their concept with the cascading doom of “End of History,” but one can’t help but feel some editing at the center of the record would have resulted in a better product. It’s not so much the quality of the content on TWWI, but the way it’s pieced together that keeps it from it’s true potential.

Structural nit-picks aside, The World We Inherited is an album that grew on me the more I spent time with it. The band have come a long way from the safety of post-grunge in Persistence of Memory, and they command an impressive toolbox of styles and a keen sense of performance. Construction, especially big-picture construction, seems to be the biggest hurdle here. But it’s the pervasive atmosphere and elusive, effective riffs that’s kept me coming back for more. Perhaps now, with their “Persistence” trilogy at a close, Final Coil can approach their next effort as a new means to escape the 3.0 Tree and reach heights unseen.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Sliptrick| Bandcamp

Websites: finalcoil.com | facebook.com | Bandcamp

Releases Worldwide: January 16th, 2024

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