I bet I can guess what these naysayers will do.  Something along these lines:  "Hey, this sounds like Korn."  And the truth is, they are right, no matter how wrong I felt they were when leveling identical criticism at the band's self-titled debut.  In short, Chamber Music sounds so much like Korn at particular times that I even looked through the CD insert to see if Jonathan Davis had performed some of the guest vocals.  I guess that's what singing lessons will get you - a voice that sounds just like the person to whose band you are most often compared.

Yet I am being a tad unfair.  Coal Chamber doesn't always sound like Korn.  Sometimes they sound like Orgy.  Or Marilyn Manson.  So perhaps we can now call them three dimensional.  Seriously, though, no matter from which direction you approach it or how you dissect it, the new Coal Chamber is always derivative of someone else.  In other words, the band's music isn't too terribly different than the varied images it conjures up to gloss up its "spooky core" credo - in a constant flux that disallows any sort of cohesion or recognition.  An identity crisis.  Not even the presence of heavy metal godfather Ozzy Osbourne on the band's remake of Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey" can save the day.  Perhaps the answer is for the band to go into hiding for the next five years, severing any contact with the outside world.  Maybe then it could create its "defining sound" and not a pastiche of this week's 15-minute corporate wet dream.  

So, in closing, what can I say?  If the flavor of the month - downtuned guitars with whiny vocals and the increasingly annoying tinge of electronica that is all the rage these days - is your bag, then you'll probably love this CD.  If, like me, you expected much more from this release - a more solidified identity embraced by the band that would frazzle and bedazzle yapping critics - then you will be sadly disappointed.     

This notion of communal conformity - regardless of mainstream deviation - seems to have plagued Coal Chamber.  Despite its "Everyday is Halloween" ethos, the band has been unkindly dubbed a one-trick pony for understandable reasons, namely its unfettered allegiance to the trademark L. A. Sound.  I hope to dispel popular opinion, however, by denouncing those who label the band as merely a Korn rip off, criticism it has been unable to shake since the release of the debut album.  Despite similarities to the trademark Korn sound, the band does make valiant efforts to deviate from its predecessors, an attempt that should not go unnoticed.  I would venture to say, however, that the reason Coal Chamber steers clear of the "Korn Clone" tag is because it lacks the musical talent of the Korns of the world, the result of, I would imagine, too much late teens-early twenties angst and musical inexperience.

If I come across as overly harsh or as someone who hates Coal Chamber - "Rayna must not have stopped gazing into the lights overhead at the young man ogling over her in the front row," many of you may be saying - please continue reading.  My criticisms have not kept me away from the band; in fact, I have seen their energetic stage show four times.  Often, the music is quite often overpowering (in the best possible sense) and - although it may sound corny - empowering.  The album's opener, "Loco," is a definite jolt to the senses, fueled by a heavy groove that either makes you want to do that annoying "group hop" that all the trendy kids are doing at shows these days or to pummel the fuck out of the aforementioned baggy pants and woolly hatted trendites.  The same goes for "Sway," the opener for three of the four times I have watched them live.  "Pig" is another outstanding number.  Yet this album, listened to in its entirety, grows ultrarepetitive, despite comedic efforts such as "Amir of the Desert," not to mention the filler track, "Maricon Puto," and the in-studio banter that concludes the CD, to break the monotony.

Overall, Coal Chamber's self-titled debut is pretty decent, a somewhat primitive yet fresh new face on the burgeoning "Aggrocore" scene.  I look forward to the band's upcoming release in the summer of 1999, an effort that Dez, the band's vocalist, promises will be full of more diversity and surprises.