Final Coil completes their Persistence trilogy with a stirring climax.

Release Date: 16th January 2024

Label: Sliptrick Records

Format: digital / CD

OK. So now and again an album comes along from a new (to you) name and blows you away. With two albums under their belt (The World We Inherited is the third part of a trilogy), we’ve managed to avoid any encounters with Final Coil. Until now. Maybe saving the best till last and admittedly not being familiar with what’s gone before, but it feels like The World We Inherited is a grand finale.

It’s not surprising to discover that the album is a dark vision. The clue is in the title. Ominous indeed. “We live in an era of unprecedented threat,” says Phil Stiles from the band. “Flashing headlines, endless conflicts both inter and intra-civilisational in nature, and the swirling voices of social media have created a cold and unforgiving world.”

The scene is set with the title track that’s a kind of nightmare overture with a dark nursery rhyme swing, a disembodied vocal and the reek of imminent threat that’s reinforced with the rabid and manic delivery of Wires. The Post Metal core combined with progressive elements and the clever use of shifts of pace and dynamics renders what follows to be an intriguing beast in the way it creeps and stalks before making a decisive and often killer move.

Chemtrails is the first of several musical behemoths. The industrial strength comes with lashings and stabs of searing riffs that get a return visit at the back end of the album in Humanity. The latter is reminiscent of the marching Panzer power of Amplifier and presents an irresistible urge to join in and roar “I am….a monster!“

Breathing space in the leaden tempo of By Starlight – no less intense, possibly more so in the considered restraint and purposefully structured guitar solo and the vocal arrangement taking on a religious mantra. Stay With Me has a hint of Steven Wilson darkness with the brooding drone and sparse electronics and heads the second half of the sequence that sees the emphasis placed more on a (relatively) tranquil ambience.

For a flavour of what to expect, if nothing else, test out Out Of Sorts – a magnificent instrumental Post Rock that would have the RADAR Festival audience (there’s a hint…) dreaming and drooling as it shifts gear briefly mid-track into a massive (it has to be said) Kashmir-y riff. Along with the massive charge of Humanity (provided below for your listening pleasure) it’s the Final Coil showpiece.

We might have to travel back a few years to catch up with Persistence Of Memory and The World We Left Behind For Others – the peak of The World We Inherited being the gateway to Fial Coil. One that might prove a one-way journey.

Here’s Chemtrails:

Final Coil online: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Youtube

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