***"One of the most surprising things about the Madison noise rock group Coordinated Suicides’ agonized, deeply disturbing and remarkable new album, This Could Be Heaven, is that it was even completed and released at all.
The recording of the album was pockmarked with personal, technical and logistical problems at different times throughout rigorous, though sporadic sessions. Then, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside ever-increasing difficulties with the production of vinyl, added years of time to a battle to get the album out to a wider audience. But, after all of this perseverance, This Could Be Heaven will be released through the fearless Marquette label Temporal Records. Even more unexpectedly, it’s a bewilderingly good record—a demanding, completely uncompromising artistic work which fits our times far more harrowingly than the album’s creators could have ever guessed.
Guitarist and singer M. Martin’s songwriting has developed considerably since the group’s brief, but explosive EP False Pleasure. The newfound reach, breadth and depth that characterizes the band’s latest music was barely hinted at in their catalog before, and the group has fully matured into a default sound and style pitched almost exactly between noise rock at its most intense and sludge metal at its most tormented. But none of this encapsulates Chris Joutras’ swollen, rotting bass lines, or the balance between rhythmic grace and brutality inherent within drummers Jonathan Brown and Tim Chandler’s frantic, yet pensive performances. It doesn’t capture Martin’s unsettling, tortured wail or carefully multitracked walls of guitar noise. And it also doesn’t indicate the unexpected diversity and stylistic range the album displays within a thematic framework that plays by its own rules and internal logic. After the scene-setting, gradually building barrage of the opening songs, Coordinated Suicides begins to spin back and forth between shoegaze textures, stirring melodies, fragile balladry, shattering downtuned dirges, haunted atmosphere, and even prepared guitar. What’s more, all of the experiments succeed; rendered as they are with focused, personal songwriting, feverish levels of artistic commitment, and meticulous attention paid to long-form cohesion. With a brilliantly unpredictable, powerful mix from Today Is The Day’s Steve Austin, This Could Be Heaven captures Coordinated Suicides at their unhinged and thoughtful best for the first time. FFO: Today is the Day, Chat Pile, Cherubs, SWANS, Unsane, Couch Slut.
