Band:	Coal Chamber
Album:	Dark Days
Style:	Nu metal
Release date:	May 07, 2002
A review by:	Herzebeth

01. Fiend
02. Glow
03. Watershed
04. Something Told Me
05. Dark Days
06. Alienate Me
07. One Step
08. Friend?
09. Rowboat
10. Drove
11. Empty Jar
12. Beckoned

First of all, if you clicked on this review just to post a comment about how stupid this band is or just to say "The reviewer must be a fag", please just stop reading and leave.

Now I'll explain why I'm doing a Nu-Metal review - I've been trying to expand my Metal knowledge, I already covered Gore, Death, Black, Progressive, Thrash, Grindcore, Power, Gothic, Gothenburg, Avant-Garde, Drone, and even Hardcore and Metalcore. So there was one genre I was afraid of hearing, and that was Nu-Metal, so I asked many metal-heads and they recommended me Coal Chamber and Mudvayne, I picked up Coal Chamber first so, here I am writing a review.

Yes the band is totally gay, I won't deny that fact, but that doesn't mean they totally suck. The music is really catchy, not aggressive nor brutal, but hell it has catchiness and some mysterious atmospheres. The execution is quite simple actually, a lot of power chords, a lot of battering drum-beats, a couple of cool bass-lines, and childish vocal work.

So what impressed me? Well most tracks have awesome scales and shit, there's even a really dark track (Rowboat) with many complex guitar chords and cool drumming. So the music is kind of good, I can see why many kids worship this band actually; anyway, the really incredible fact is the musical structure, the usual Nu-Metal formula (Intro + Chorus + Paragraph + Chorus + Outro) is not attached here (except for Drove, damn that song sucked big time), the structures towards this album are multifaceted really, the songs even have atmospheres and some breakdowns.

Some songs are enjoyable, if you are interested try "Dark Days", "Fiend", "Beckoned", "Empty Jar" or "Rowboat". Those tracks enormously differ from conventional Mallcore, the bridges, riffs, crashes, etc. create many kind of cool atmospheres, a lot of "strawberry flavored" fierceness, and gloomy ambience. Yes there are many other tracks that sucked like Japanese prostitutes doing porn auditions. In this case just avoid "Something Told Me", "One Step", "Friends" and "Drove".

So I repeat, this is gayness, kind of cool and catchy gayness, but gayness none the less. You must be one of the most open minded metal-heads around to actually like this album, so it's up to you.

By the way, the artwork is fucking cool dudes.