The cover art for Sister Faith, the fourth and most recent LP by Louisville, Ky.'s Coliseum, offers little evidence as to how the album might actually sound. The clean black background is graced by a single skull. Soil and roots have collected on top of the skull, from which vibrant white-and-purple flowers sprout. The band's name is tagged beside it in a graffiti-inspired font. Underneath, the record's name reads in delicate cursive. Both titles are printed in the same shade as the flowers.
For the unknowing record buyer, the possibilities for what lies within are many. Could this be yet another hook-slinging grunge holdover à la the Foo Fighters? Is it a punk outfit mining the monstrously infectious catalogs of The Stooges or Misfits? Are they a pack of Cure-enthused post-punk emoters chasing the fame of a band like AFI?
In reality, Coliseum is none of those things. They're a fleet and furious punk group that harnesses hardcore momentum as fuel for songs that are catchy and deceptively complex. But the cover is still appropriate for Sister Faith, an album that contains the most mature and approachable songs these 10-year veterans have yet to create. They've reached a level at which they could appeal to consumers who pick up the album for any of the above reasons. That's no small feat.
"The fact that indie fans have started to latch on to what is, in essence, an uncompromising punk rock band is indicative of the quality of the songwriting," writes Popmatters' Dean Brown in his review of the record. "When a band like Coliseum unites distinct sectors of the music community, you better believe there is something special going on."
To wit, Sister Faith is founded on surging punk rock. Bassist Kayhan Vaziri rumbles with muscular quickness as drummer Carter Wilson rips through economical cavalcades. Guitarist-singer Ryan Patterson, the band's lone original member, unleashes torrents of strung-out distortion that solidify into brute-force body blows.
"I feel like there's that energy and there's that passion, and it's wholly punk at its heart," Patterson explains. "I mean, that's where we come from. But then it just goes wherever it wants."
Funneling that energy into forward-thinking rock that churns and charms in a way that even non-punk fans can latch onto is undoubtedly special, but Coliseum isn't the only band that's solving the puzzle. Canadian crew White Lung tore through 2012's Sorry with propulsion that outstrips even Coliseum, their tensile riffs pushed into the red by an unstoppable rhythmic dynamo. This year, Pennsylvania's Pissed Jeans hitched their burly noise to a feral pulse, delivering thrill after thrill on the new Honeys.
In this increasingly crowded niche, Coliseum's experience sets them apart. Before Sister Faith, they honed their tactics across three LPs and a litany of EPs, singles and splits. 2010's House With a Curse represented a pretty drastic shift to the sleeker, less combative style they refine and expand on the new album. But a few bedrock elements remain, such as Patterson's clobbering growl and the trio's dominating rhythms.
"It's growth," says the 35-year-old Patterson. "It's age. It's maturity. It's all those mistakes you make along the way and all those accomplishments you make. The band is this living, breathing entity that has existed for a decade now, which is kind of mind-blowing. We have that benefit of that foundation."
Coliseum is thus able to dish out youthful vigor with time-tested skill and elevate it with profound lyrical themes. Take "Love Under Will." At five minutes, it's an epic by their standards, and it opens with corresponding grandeur: Strings and distortion swell slowly, until they're blown away by a riff that's as wistful as it is wounding. Slowly, the rhythm section ratchets to a fever pitch, summoning hardcore volatility beneath Patterson's sharp post-punk prickles. His words, simply stated, push back earnestly against the mortality of life and love: "Never wanted time to stop," he roars, "only wanted this to last forever!"
"You tackle these things head-on, and you get to have that catharsis," Patterson offers, "that three-minute catharsis, over and over."
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