{"id":200290,"date":"2025-10-09T11:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200290\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T11:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T11:57:08","slug":"coastlands-coastlands-review-angry-metal-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200290\/","title":{"rendered":"Coastlands \u2013 Coastlands Review | Angry Metal Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Coastlands hail from Orlando in the United States and are clear purveyors of post. At least, that was my first thought when I skimmed the promo copy we received for their self-titled sophomore release. After all, it\u2019s self-titled, it\u2019s got that nifty cover art, the song titles are all single words, and the Bandcamp embed uses lowercase. That\u2019s post, friends. Generally, I\u2019ve been hit-or-miss on post-metal\u2014I value its atmospheres and unique emotional spectrum, but dislike the straightforwardness a lot of post-metal artists employ. So Coastlands seemed like a promising album, one that suggested feeling, growth, and artistry from passionate musicians. Does it deliver on my slightly lofty expectations?<\/p>\n

At first, it\u2019s a little hard to tell, because Coastlands opens fairly quietly. There\u2019s a distorted haze, a creeping, building tune on the keys, and some distant vocals. Here and there, a blast emerges from the gloom\u2014a synth hit here, a crash there\u2014but the whole is static and fog and it\u2019s hard to tell exactly what you\u2019re in for. That\u2019s opener \u201cSee,\u201d but it\u2019s ironically the follower, \u201cHollowing,\u201d that provides clarity. Far more \u201cmusical,\u201d \u201cHollowing\u201d builds on the Coastlands sound, a huge, distorted creature of post-metal with hardcore influence and an atmospheric fog that often erupts with intense passages of screaming and anger. Between these moments, synths, guitars, and plaintive, post-esque clean singing keep a balance. In this way, Coastlands is an album that doesn\u2019t fully commit to either side of the post-metal pendulum. It is plaintive, raging, expansive, and straightforward, all at once.<\/p>\n

Coastlands by coastlands<\/a><\/p>\n

It is also dense\u2014very, very dense. Practically every instrument is heavily distorted or wet. The guitars in particular are so much so as to make individual riffs nearly indiscernible, and the bass has a similar treatment\u2014it may as well be a second guitar for how much presence it has. Every hit on the snare drum reverberates (probably too much, but it is in line with the rest of the music). The piano is the only instrument really spared this treatment, I imagine, to make it stand out more against the harsher elements of Coastlands\u2019s music. Even so, they echo, and the synths on the other side crackle with the rest. The result is that if you aren\u2019t paying close attention, the songs start to blur together. \u201cNeverhere\u201d can easily pass you by if you\u2019re not watching out for it, despite its comparatively uplifting vocal melodies. Speaking of vocals, the promo material for Coastlands implies this is the first of Coastlands\u2019s music to feature vocals. Unsurprisingly, the vocals, screams, and cleans are also heavily distorted and produced (respectively), but they\u2019re also so low in the mix\u2014and fighting against so many loud instruments\u2014that it\u2019s hard to hear them, screams and all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I find Coastlands hard to properly immerse myself in, and I\u2019ve largely covered the reasons\u2014an overbearing production and heavy use of distortion that makes the music difficult to follow. It\u2019s not particularly melodic, though it has its moments (the plaintive picking in \u201cDrugblood\u201d is nice). It doesn\u2019t make me feel contemplative, cathartic, or particularly angry. I do get the sense that it has layers, but they\u2019re so hard to pick up on that they don\u2019t end up doing much. \u201cVessels\u201d is a song with a lot of components, but not a lot happens. It\u2019s got a cool post-metal drive towards the end, but the fuzz that backs it up suffocates it. \u201cMors\u201d is largely a repetition of the same motif on keys, but it doesn\u2019t build to anything, doesn\u2019t go anywhere. And it\u2019s frustrating, not just because the album is advertised as being \u201cintricately layered and dense,\u201d but because I believe it probably is and have no way to prove the theory.<\/p>\n

In the promo copy for Coastlands, the author says it \u201ckeeps revealing its secrets even after multiple, attentive listens.\u201d I agree with this\u2014the more I listen to it, the more I notice about it. Unfortunately, I still haven\u2019t heard its heart. Coastlands feels to me like an album betrayed by its production and robbed by its master. The intense distortion covers the guitars, the synths, and the passion I know the members of Coastlands have for their craft. I believe it\u2019s here, but I can\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.0\/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb\/s mp3
Label: Translation Loss<\/a>
Websites: coastlands.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/coastlandsofficial<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: October 10th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coastlands hail from Orlando in the United States and are clear purveyors of post. At least, that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[47436,4891,10613,64,63,125255,134,136,118978,41353,228,229,125256],"class_list":{"0":"post-200290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2-0","9":"tag-4891","10":"tag-american-metal","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-coastlands","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-oct25","17":"tag-post-metal","18":"tag-review","19":"tag-reviews","20":"tag-translation-loss"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}