Coliseum / Burning Love

Coliseum and Burning Love have been touring endlessly since their consecutive releases, and remind us why we love them with their latest live split, recorded during their 2010 tour together (namely the show in Gainesville, Florida). This album is packed with seven tracks from each band, an impromptu greatest hits to tide you over until their next colossal releases. Coliseum present songs off their latest album, House With A Curse (2010, Temporary Residence), plus a couple of favourites, "Year of the Pig" and "Defeator." Strangely, "Blind in One Eye," a definitive single from the Louisville hardcore band, isn't included. Burning Love offer six songs off of Songs for Burning Lovers (Deranged, 2010), with an extra track, "Mess." The fact that this split is a live recording doesn't keep either band from sounding as thunderous as their studio-quality material, often times fooling me into second guessing the legitimacy of what they mean by "live." Often times, bands release works riddled with mindless banter and different renditions of selected songs, which isn't the case here. Instead, this release is packed with full songs sung with ferocious intensity, with hardly a break in-between.