Live music review: Coalesce Invented Your Favorite Band and You’ve Probably Never Heard of Them

One of the joys of the chaotic internet is that legendary bands never truly die—they just slumber beneath the surface, waiting to drag themselves from the muck like Godzilla and roar back into the stratosphere. Coalesce, the Kansas City hardcore pioneers who helped birth metalcore in the ’90s, has been one of those beasts. During my annual hometown pilgrimage to Chicago this July, I discovered Coalesce was playing with local post-metal heavies Pelican at the gorgeous Thalia Hall in Pilsen. Having not seen them since 2000 or 2001, I had to witness whether middle age had dulled their legendary violence.

It hadn’t.

Austin’s Porcelain opened with a taste of what the music scene up north is missing. Pelican did their thing—heavy, atmospheric riffs that climbed toward the heavens and spiraled into lament, lulling the crowd of boring nerds into a meditative trance. But Coalesce wanted blood, and I was here for it. I’m not shitting on Pelican; I like Pelican but there was an energy shift in the room from Coalesce bringing the heat with “A Disgust for Details” and then moving into Pelican’s more somber melodies. The old men in the crowd hoisted their overpriced beers in celebration as the mighty dudes from Kansas City gave Chicago a run for its money and I was thankful to be there. (Shout out to my dude Tom for loaning me the cash to grab a new hoodie.)

Ripping through classics from “Functioning on Impatience” and “Give Them Rope,” opening with a crusher from 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening, the band proved they still have plenty left in the tank. There’s something special about watching a middle-aged guy scream “You can’t kill us all!” thirty years later while the guitarist goes into mass convulsions, delivering that frantic, never-the-same-thing-twice energy that made Coalesce legendary. And as a dad who’s got plenty of gray in his beard, the battle cries of our younger selves never lose the blade when the band is undeniable. For me, Coalesce’s legacy only grows as they seem more important, less of a commercialized time of bands doing their best to wind up on magazine covers, not that there is anything wrong with those who cashed in back when majors scooped them up. But as I can’t listen to Poison The Well these days, Coalesce’s legacy has never tarnished, the same goes for bands like Cursed, The National Acrobat, and Trap Them.

Without Coalesce there is no Norma Jean, Nails, Every Time I Die, or any of the bands they came in their wake. They’re pioneers of metalcore before it become a label that became meaningless and will sit alongside Converge, Botch, and the Dillinger Escape Plan as bands who didn’t play by the rules and did their own thing well beyond the parameters of what “success” can look like in the underground.

Thalia Hall is a stunning venue. The sound is perfect and the ambiance is something you want, a mix of classic Chicago design from a forgotten era, having been built when Al Capone still ran the town while being updated to a place for fans to celebrate their heroes in the present. As Pilsen, the neighborhood Thalia Hall resides gets gentrified over time, you can argue for or against what that represents with its art everywhere along with amazing Mexican food, on the greater cultural shift of people moving in and out of that part of town. But as a flare in the sky for the right kind of money put into a venue, Thalia Hall is a gem. I was glad to finally take in a show at the venue.

The band played some new stuff, which delivered. Are we going to get a part-time version of Coalesce? Fine by me, if so. Hardcore is bigger than ever. Some of these new arena-sized bands should take the old heads out, the pioneers, help them pay their house notes. By taking a band like Coalesce on the road, they’d help their fans discover music that influenced hardcore scene.

Pelican and Coalesce wasn’t really a young man’s night, it was for folks who like to be in bed at a sensible hour. I hope as the band does more, they get the chance to be seen by younger, hungrier fans who won’t spend their energy leaving the house and finding “good parking.”

Maybe that’s why Coalesce still matters. While Spiritbox sells out arenas with algorithmic-friendly ‘heavy’ music, the bands who actually invented this sound are playing to crowds worried about planter fasciitis. The streaming generation is discovering ‘new’ metalcore that’s just watered-down versions of what Coalesce perfected in 1997.

Coalesce could’ve become some lame heavy jam band as the group aged. Instead they stayed hard as nails. As the band’s lore grows, I hope kids discover these cult heroes for themselves and finally stuff these artists pockets with the cash they deserve. The beast is awake, and it’s still hungry. 

Featured photo courtesy of Coalesce

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