MASSIVE four-dvd set that collects a shit-ton of Coalesce footage that was recorded from between 1995 through 2005...ten years of insane live shows and unbridled chaos from one of the groundbreaking metal core bands of the 1990's. Their channeling of Black Flag's misanthropic fury through a ferocious, hardcore tinged angular metal assault spawned a thousand imitators, but noone has ever come close to capturing the same level of pure aggression and sonic weight that these cats did back in the '90s. I got to see them a couple of times when they were touring in the later part of the decade, and their unpredictable sets were always so off the chain that I remember thinking that I was going to get a mouthful of headstock or snare drum at any given moment. For one poor chick in Wilkes Barre, that actually happened. While the notorious Wilkes-Barre Fest performance is only captured here in a brief five minute clip sans the climactic carnage, this is still as exhaustive a collection of live material as you are going to get, at least until Coalesce gets around to putting together the second volume in this potentially ongoing series.

For Volume One, you get four discs, each one with 80 to 108 minutes of footage, with video footage that runs a mere five minutes long to full sets from the band. The shows range from club gigs to VFW halls to riotous basement performances, and the quality of the footage tends to run towards the low-fi end of things, with solid video quality but sometimes spotty audio, but all of this is perfectly watcheable, and hardcore Coalesce fans are going to lose their minds over the ridiculous amount of live footage here...I mean, there's almost six and a half hours of live stuff spanning these discs. There's a lot to go through.

The set is beautifully packaged in a screen printed box that holds all four discs in white cardstock wallets and a six-page booklet that has a reproductions of a bunch of flyers for old Coalesce shows.