Coke Bust – Confined (Grave Mistake Records)
Though Coke Bust isn’t exactly subtle in their approach – from the blistering abrasion of their music all the way down the line to the band name itself (not a dig mind you, as the combination of over-the-top bluntness and dryly tongue-in-cheek authoritarianism makes for one of the better straight edge hardcore band names out there), there’s little room for subtlety in any facet of their existence.
Coke Bust – Confined (Grave Mistake Records)
Though Coke Bust isn’t exactly subtle in their approach – from the blistering abrasion of their music all the way down the line to the band name itself (not a dig mind you, as the combination of over-the-top bluntness and dryly tongue-in-cheek authoritarianism makes for one of the better straight edge hardcore band names out there), there’s little room for subtlety in any facet of their existence. But this directness doesn’t preclude a certain finesse, the type that’s a direct and proportionate reflection of the years they’ve put into their work. It’s something that decidedly separates them from the legions of bands who think that a collection of blastbeats and breakdowns are the sole ingredients necessary for a solid, fast hardcore album.
Confined will likely come as a surprise to neither anybody who’s heard any of Coke Bust’s earlier releases nor anybody who’s followed recent fastcore in general. The influences are readily apparent – a little Infest here, a little Heresy there – but the surface level comparisons fail to capture the spirit of what the band is able to pull off. There’s a cohesion present, not only within the songs but within the context of the album (a term which is only loosely applicable, as the entirety of the record lasts a hair’s breadth over nine minutes) with tempos ranging from fast to faster barreling full-force into each other in a manner that doesn’t sacrifice any structural elements or threaten to devolve into unfocused noise. Starting with the peal of feedback that leads into “Iron Spiral” and concluding with the surprisingly catchy “Stockholm Syndrome” (a brief eruption that seems to just stop right when it’s getting good, leaving a listener wanting maybe just a little bit more), there’s no filler present, no excess, barely even a pause between the songs.
The worldview expressed is also nothing unfamiliar, though it also seems both more refined and more expansive than on previous efforts. Discontent is still registered, common punk rock nemeses still squarely in the crosshairs. But there’s a distinct hint of self-directed anger as well. Unlike so much hardcore bluntness that’s directed solely at some distinct second person fuckup (from “You’re X’d” on up), there’s a willingness within Confined to shoulder the burden of blame for the world’s ills that a less nuanced band might forgo. This isn’t to say there’s no outward excoriation present, but the weight of culpability seems evenly dispersed between the I, the You, and the We, rendering universal not only the world’s fucked-upedness but spreading evenly the burden of correcting the seemingly irreparable.
It’s tempting, when confronted with something so well-executed, to tender all sorts of superlatives – that x album is the best the genre’s offering, that y EP is exactly what its genre needs. But some of those often unjustified declamatories aren’t necessarily misdirected when dealing with Confined. Straight edge hardcore would do well to foster more bands like Coke Bust; bands that forgo lowest common denominator pseudo-frat boy machismo and watered-down commercial aspiration alike in favor of the sort of bracing yet finely honed, despondent yet cathartic work that may not re-invent wheels, but functions with more grace and gravity than that peddled by the vast majority of those who could be considered their peers.
