REVIEW: COMA – Excess

 

COMA – Excess

Mystic Production

A brief look into their background reveals that COMA rank among Poland’s most commercially successful rock/metal acts, repeatedly topping national charts and collecting multiple Fryderyk awards—the country’s equivalent of the Grammys. Yet it took their fourth full-length album, Excess, for me to finally explore their work, and I must admit that the experience left me more perplexed than impressed.

The album’s most immediate issue is its lack of a coherent musical direction. Reviewers often criticize predictability in modern releases, but Excess swings to the opposite extreme. Each track seems to operate under a different stylistic premise, offering hints of a direction that the band never actually commits to. By the time the album ends, it’s difficult to articulate what you’ve just listened to—or what the band intended you to hear.

Stylistically, the record sits somewhere within heavy rock/metal, but it is heavily interspersed with alternative, grunge, progressive, and nu‑metal elements. To complicate matters further, the album includes several extremely mellow ballads that clash with the heavier material. One moment you’re confronted with a modern, groove‑oriented track; the next, you’re dropped into a soft, sentimental ballad. Then comes “F.T.P.” with its punk‑infused attitude, adding yet another layer to an already disjointed palette. The end result feels scattered, excessive, and padded with filler.

Excess may resonate with dedicated fans of ALICE IN CHAINS or TOOL—listeners who appreciate eclecticism, mood shifts, and genre‑blending experimentation. For most others, however, the album’s lack of cohesion and its abrupt stylistic turns may prove more frustrating than intriguing.

Christine  Parastatidou