Breath After Coma - Woke Up In Babel
Meet Breath After Coma, a hard-rocking band based in Athens, Greece. They recently dropped their album Woke Up In Babel.
Breath After Coma
Made up of Orestis Tentzeris (vocals, guitar), Theo Matthaios (guitar), Kostas Karapanagiotis (bass), and Vagelis Karapanagiotis (drums), the band got together in 2013. Initially, they just jammed together, but after a while the sessions began to coalesce, as the music took on organic shape.
Woke Up In Babel encompasses eight-tracks. “Toledo!” starts things off, opening on tight, almost industrial-flavored guitars that expand to down and dirty resonant muscularity flowing into more shimmering colors. The rhythm of this track is magnetic, pulling you in like a sonic vortex.
On some tracks, Breath After Coma’s sound is vaguely reminiscent of Volbeat, raw, powerful, and hard-hitting. Just pure rock and roll rolled out with gusto. On other tracks, their sound is akin to the Deftones, although more opaque.
The best tracks on the album include the title track, which rides eerie austere riffs on the intro, and then moves into a pulsing, melody full of dark, murky guitars that take on angular skeleton-like tones prior to ramping back up. Tentzeris voice fits the music, delivering tight, potent tones that are easy to listen-to.
The rhythm of this track is magnetic, pulling you in like a sonic vortex.
“Levitated” travels on dark energy from thick guitars. There’s something about this tune that reminds of the Deftones: the humming cloak of sound, shimmering yet simultaneously dense, and the grinding flow of the harmonics.
I love the lyrics on “Fireball,” another Deftones-esque tune, because they convey the pain of lost love.
These days will last forever / I'm buried deep in sand / And ashes of your smell / I am in pain, my dearest / Oh how much they burn / And bad days don't seem to end / Burn away from me, fireball on my skin / Burn away from me, and burst all from within
Woke Up In Babel is excellent, full of viscous washes of oily colors, grand levels of sonic bulk, and the accomplished musicianship of Breath After Coma.
