Collection Prestige

To get an idea of how much this album is abominable, just think even St. Anger may be better. Why? St. Anger is, at least, coherent. From the beginning to the end it consists in tin-can drums, screaming nu-metal vocals, breakdowns and the rest, but it’s nonetheless consistent in mediocrity. Collection Prestige on the contrary isn’t only overall awful but messy and incoherent. Listening to it, if you can, you’ll find bits of pop music, crappy goth rock, industrial sounds or parts that don’t belong to any particular genre just because they can’t be considered as music to begin with; actually everything but metal. But you know, who still cares for metal except a bunch of elitists at this infamous place known as metal-archives.com?

Now if you still want to put a label on this overall negation of any form of music, just call it nu-metal. It shows vulgar screaming vocals with loads of hardcore and rap influences, awfully programmed drums sounding most of time like kitchenware, combined to a huge amount of electronics and distorted sounds. In fact, this album perfectly incarnates the general idea the layman gets of “extreme” music: a wall of noise – noise at the negative sense, I’m not speaking about Merzbow here – devoid from any structure or melody, topped by some barking moron. What is the “extreme” band by essence? Slipknot, good sir. Just listen to the beginning of the second, third or fourth track – actually, the list could go on... – doesn’t it sound exactly like Slipknot? Well, you got it. Without mentioning the track titles perfectly complete the picture: “Fuckable”, “Ohlala”, or a song about downloading? Are these guys serious?

The answer is, no. They just can’t be. The proof? “You’re listening to Right Click... Save As from the new Carnival in Coal album called Collection Prestige, enjoy it with your friends”, etc. That’s exactly the kind of joke Pete Steele is familiar with (remember... “Thank you for having bought our new recording of October Rust, we’ve spent six months getting high and recording it...” and that was already ten years ago) with the difference that in TON case, after two minutes of joking you got around one hour of genuine music, while in Carnival in Coal case the joke never seems to end. Lyrics are, from the beginning to the end, stupid. The music itself, when there is some to be found (what is pretty rare), often sounds like parody: the high-pitched shrieks in Satanic Disaster for instance are an obvious Dani Filth impersonation, while another part in Delivery Day will sound like a prog rock caricature, and so on. And, of course, there’s this omnipresent hardcore/nu-metal background without, once again, any logic. Indeed, they definitely can’t have written their songs before recording them.

The most surprising is, in spite of all those disparate elements, all tracks more or less sound the same, as odd as it could seem. Just because all said elements are present in every track, where they melt in the same indefinable mud one would be in pain paying real attention to. Listening to the whole album, even as background music, is already a challenge. The only songs sounding a tad distinct are the pop-goth ballad Cartilage Holocaust (a very poor clone of The Sisters of Mercy, minus the talent), the slower D.O.A (for... Drunk Once Again. wov) as well as this useless random piano conclusion Promenade, but as they’re all equally pitiful, no one will give a fuck for them. At least they exhibit less nu-metal shit than the rest of the album, poor consolation.

The funniest fact here is some called this collection (to echo the title...) of mallcore-influenced nonsense avant-garde metal. It’s incoherent, so it must be intellectual, right? It’s noisy, so it must be metal, right, right? Allright, metal it’s definitely not, but it may still be avant-garde. Exactly like this work I saw last day in that contemporary art exhibition, where chalks were given to visitors so that they could write anything they wanted on it. Please don’t tell me this was art. Please don’t tell me Carnival in Coal is art. Please don’t tell me Slipknot is art.

Highlights: ...

Carnival in Coal were a band that I had only recently got into. At the time, their new album, Collection Prestige was coming out. Seeing as how they were an avantgarde band, and how I love bands like Mr. Bungle and Crotchduster, I was expecting good things. However, I got much more than I would imagine!

CinC are a band that not only love to play structured metal, but love to fuck things up by adding in entirely different genres into the mix, most common being disco or lounge music. On this CD in particular, they really go all over the place. Each song has it's own unique flavor and own brand of insturmentation, and even vocalization.

Party At Your House- 8.5/10- Definitely an awesome (and creepy) opening. I really enjoy the whole idea behind it, and it builds up very nicely and has fantastic atmosphere, like screaming at the beginning that reminds me of Saw, and insanely creepy synth in the background. Coupled with some awesome death vocals, this would make great Halloween party music.

Fuckable- 10/10- Arguable the best song on the album, this song is purely nuts, and catchy as hell too! The song, as you can tell, is basically about sex, and they pull off the theme well, and don't make it too much like musical porn (like Crotchduster). So it starts off all funky with great clean vocals, and then go into a headbangable riff wit...tapdancing? CinC use two instruments I wouldn't expect in a metal song. Tapdancing, and xylophones. It's seriously an awesome combo in this song. The samples are interesting enough, and the last part of the song seriously goes crazy and is fucking awesome. This is the Mammal Sauce for CinC.

Satanic Disaster- 8/10- This song is a fantastic parody of satanism. The audible lyrics grab you right after the catchy as hell beginning riff and make you laugh your face off. Then the satanism shreds in as CinC do kinda Berzerker-ish vocals at you. Then right after the chorus, we get a hilarious and catchy acoustic bridge. Good shit. Again, they do a great job on atmosphere, giving a great satanic vibe, even with the clean vocals in the chorus and parts of the verses. Then it ends with a solo which you'd probably expect to hear out of a raw black metal band formed by 14 year olds. It's so awesome...

Right Click...Save As- 9/10- Sad that it's true, but it's a great song nonetheless. Awesome riffs start us off along with great hardcore-ish barking about killing time by pirating music. Some interesting percussion can be detected, and the lyrics are much more hilarious in this song compared to the last one, at least for me anyway. So it continues with this and then interupts with a parody of those promo voices that interupt demo songs. Very funny stuff. Then the last verse, gawd, the funniest off the album. "Went to the bakers! Stole some bread! Got arrested! That makes no sense!!"

Cartilage Holocaust- 8.5/10- Basically a catchy disco song with gorey lyrics. It doesn't really change around like the rest of the songs, but that doesn't make it any less hilarious. The lyrics are freakin' fantastic and really make the song sound catchy. Could be a real fun sing along! The vocals are fantastic here too. I really enjoy the accent in particular. It adds greatly to the humor factor. I also love the part where it starts to slow down and he talks about the "inner beauty." Definitely sounds like a song you could make love to or get funky with. Definitely the most accessable song off the album, even if the ending totally growls at you.

The Lady And The Dormant Sponge- 9.5/10- Huh? Well, whatever, it's awesome. Starts off with some random whooshy wind, and then goes all like black metal that comes at you like some sort of hellstorm. The lyrics for this really make no sense, and they even mention that during the song that it'll probably make sense later. Ha, that's a lie, but who cares? There's also more use of xylophone in this song too, and I love the guitars that go throughout the song. They're played excellently and sound great! Then it kinda slows down for little bits in certain places, fluctuating with crunching riffs, and goes right back to the hellstorm. Then it sort of calms itself, while still making no sense. This song really starts giving you the feeling you're on some sort of epic quest, and it's really fun in that sense, especially when the power metal vibes start to kick in. Then it ends again with a much better solo that reeks of power metal.

Delivery Day- 10/10- Another hilarious song, starting off with sneaky sounding music about stupid TV ads. After a little Nintendo interlude, it starts to kick in with the black/death still talking of the ads, and then a clean sounding chorus that sounds amazing. Then there's a little part with black/death with acoustics in the background that really just gets me everytime. Plus the lyrics are a total riot. "So I grab my phone and vote for brainless chicks, and I order dozens of useless shits!" Ha, this is basically their version of Weird Al's eBay song.

Ohlala- 9/10- This song has a really great start, sounding awesomely discordant with some neat use of percussion and shakers, and then it kinda backs off to make way for the vocals, with those crazy awesome lyrics. Then it has a chorus with more chugging and weird chants of "Ohlala." Oh how CinC love their women. The lyrics aren't like Crotchduster status, but there's still that kinda theme a-brewin'. Then it chugs for a bit longer, and then reverberates on the beginning riff to end the song.

Living In The Plastic Age- 9.5/10- Starts off with soft chugs, adding piano, and then bass, and then an epic riff blasts out and chugs through for a little bit. Then it adds xylophone yet again! Next, it goes into the best chorus off of the album. It's weird hearing something "beautiful" sounding on a song on a CD like this, but it's great to hear. Plus the lyrics, though not written by them, are excellent and excellently sung. However, the back death-barf-vox don't fit too well. Thankfully, the part where they bust out kazoos totally makes up for it. The answering machine part...uhh, that's just there. It doesn't really do anything. Then it theres some power-metal-esque guitars and womanly chanting, then ending with a disco synth revision on the chorus.

D.O.A (Drunk Once Again)- 8/10- Starts off sounding slow and semi-depressing, adding some piano, but then explodes with a huge death/doom blasts, and chugs at you really slowly. You can tell the atmosphere this song tries to set with the title. The hardcore barks from the vocalist really sound convincing. There's also a random megaphone voice in the background. Then it goes into some slow choral chanting with some nice and slow guitar riffs. This song doesn't really have such mind-blowing humor, but there's a little to find here. The chorus sort of has that beautiful vibe to it like Living In The Plastic Age, though not so strong. Then it majorly slows down and only has faint drum machine percussion and some piano and other noises as there's some wind, but then comes back to the chorus. This is definitely the "sad" song of the album, and it could probably depress you if you get into it.

Promenade- 9/10- It's basically got the same creepiness as Party At Your House, but it bases this off of how absolutely insane it can sound. Starts off with some nice violin and piano, but as it progresses, it gets more violently discordant, with the piano becoming more noticably dark and having weirder time signatures (and even just plain fucking it up at times). The violin really adds a nice touch, and it basically just gets weirder and weirder until the end, which rains of your face and ends the album rather coldly, but in a good way.

So there's Collection Prestige for you. I wouldn't call it anything less than hilarious insanity. If you enjoy any of that sort of stuff, especially tinged with more emphasis on death metal (or genre-changing for that matter), then this album is perfect for you. However, it may be hard to get all of the humor without a lyric sheet, and plus there're just a few little nitpicks that warrant it from being perfect. A very fun listen indeed.