CARNIVAL IN COAL — Vivalavida (review)

CARNIVAL IN COAL — Vivalavida album cover

Album · 1999 · Avant-garde Metal

4/5 · 2021-05-31
siLLy puPPy

One of a handful of bands that were so smitten by the crazy genre skipping possibilities of Mr Bungle that they took on the adventurous task of creating their own style of band based on the endless limitations. CARNIVAL IN COAL was such a band that emerged from Amiens, France and basically the brainchild of vocalist Arno Strobl and multi-instrumentalist Axel Wursthorn (aka Karl Zengeris). The project existed from 1995-2007 but has been revived in 2014. CARNIVAL IN COAL caught the avant-garde metal world by surprise in how they mixed death metal, black metal and other metal genres with disco, pop, electronica and whatever else they could dream up. Despite the influences of Mr Bungle and Faith No More, CARNIVAL IN COAL successfully forged their own way without sounding derivative in any way, mostly by focusing on the extreme metal aspects and juxtaposing things in an overlapping way rather than slapping you in the face with a million genres per minute.

After releasing the demo “Sramak” in 1997, the duo required another two years to construct its debut VIVALAVIDA (Long Live Life) which emerged in 1999. The album was the very first release of the fledgling Majors record label. This was very much a homegrown project with the duo handling all affairs which unfortunately at this stage required the usage of a drum machine but despite it all, it’s quite impressive and although these types of everything but the kitchen sink projects often collapse under their own bloated ambitions, CARNIVAL IN COAL was quite successful in crafting an album’s worth of metal meets everything else in a way that sounds organic and logical. While not quite as adventurous or ingenious as the epic Mr Bungle albums, CARNIVAL IN COAL did however craft an extremely wild ride that focused on the extremities of the metal universe while adding cheesy pop atmospheres, disco beats, funk rock and even electronic weirdness. Not to be taken seriously at all, CIC adopted the nonchalant self-deprecating humor of the Bunglers and offering a comedic approach.

VIVALAVIDA exudes its titular prowess in a multi-faceted way. Exhibiting a certain joie de vivre like only the French can, CARNIVAL IN COAL crafts a tasty recipe like a top chef at the Cordon Bleu with a heap of black metal, a dash of death metal growls and blast betas, pinches of reggae and disco, moments of chamber rock, industrial bleakness, pop infused hooks and progressive off-kilter time signatures. While the Mike Patton influences are never left too far behind, i have to admit that CIC did a remarkable task of reinterpreting all the possibilities of where the Bunglers never lurked. After all the limitations are really as far as your imagination can take you and without any concern for commercial viability or pleasing the critics, Wurtshorn an d Strobl simply let their freak flags fly as high as they could hoist them. Of course these kinds of albums only work if there is some sort of underpinning that connects them altogether and for whatever reason it works pretty well.

While i wouldn’t call VIVALAVIDA an album that will eclipse anything the Bunglers cranked out, CARNIVAL IN COAL certainly did a noble job of finding their own voice in the wilderness from the getgo. This is quite an enjoyable album that pays attention to the continuity of the musical flow and for a genre skipping album of this sort, a vital ingredient to keep potential fans from fleeing in horror. The metal parts are pretty much limited to riffing so no technical wizardry in that department. This is a rhythmically stable sort of album that offers a bit of progressive outbursts from time to time. The gist of the album is to alternate heavier metal oriented motifs with slicker synth-rich disco and easy listening and thus alternate growly vocals with clean vocal harmonies. While there is certainly room for improvement as the album could add a bit more variety if you’re going for broke, overall VIVALAVIDA is an interesting artifact of the late 1990s that hasn’t gotten as much attention as other avant-garde metal bands such as Sigh, Unexpect or even Dog Fashion Disco, however still a must for avant-garde metal heads.