1998 was a ridiculously fruitful year in terms of bands that I loved putting out records that I loved. I made a list of important records during college and almost all of them came from 1998. I’m just going to go in alphabetical order and share some with you starting with Coalesce’s Functioning on Impatience.
Functioning on Impatience was the first hard core record I heard that was actually recorded well to some degree. The record opens without the band. It’s just Sean Ingram screaming, “What more do you want from me?” I think I was hooked from that first line, but it turns out that when the music comes in it basically rules. It’s heavy as all get out and there aren’t any cheap, chuggy parts or mindless double bass runs.
The drumming was inventive, interesting, and way different from what most hard core bands were doing back then. The guitar was heavy because of what was being played—not because of what it was being played through. And then there are the vocals. Who sounds like that? Ingram’s vocals make it or break it for most, and it definitely made it for me. I thought it was brutal and awesome—like an angry polar bear. His lyrics had more wit and depth than most hard core records. There wasn’t all this talk of “We’ve got to do this” or “I’m going to burn this place down,” or anything like that. I took away ideas from the weird time signatures and the drumming and brought them to what Cool Hand Luke was doing. You can hear it on I Fought Against Myself the most.
