It’s been slightly over a year since Athens, Georgia’s Coulier released their debut, Cool, Cooler, Coulier, which blew my mind by cramming twelve tracks of ultimate guitar riffage into a span of about twenty-three minutes. Receiving their second release, Vibin’, I noticed that some dramatic changes had taken place – at least when it came to the cover art: Cool, Cooler, Coulier had a guy with no skin; Vibin’ had folks with no clothes.

Popping the disc in, I was greeted with the level of precision playing from Adam Newman (right guitar), Brion Kennedy (left guitar), and Navid Amlani (drums) I had come to expect from the group after hearing their last release. As opening track "Vibin’" continued on, however, it became rather clear that this was a slightly more evolved Coulier. The track clocks in at nearly eight minutes (over one-third the length of Cool, Cooler, Coulier) and takes advantage of the length to make an amazing amount of stylistic twists and turns including a segment with what I think is a talk box.

Newman had described Vibin’ as a "70-minute prog/metal/jazz piece broken up into 7 tracks" and the second track "Ladder to Hell" seems to be the sort of odd by-product that you may end up with when trying to create nice individual tracks of music. Listening to the album continuously, the track does its job, providing a smooth transition from "Vibin’" into "Vibin’ II" with its scalar descent, but taken out of the album context it’s an odd little nugget. I think of the best little nuggets, however, might be on the track "Standuhr" where the band closes with their variation of the NPR theme.

Closing out Vibin’ is the epic track “Halibut” which clocks in at fifty minutes – two-and-a-half times the length of the rest of the album. Featuring a long list of contributors in the liner notes, "Halibut" is unlike anything else heard from Coulier in large part thanks to the "premix" work of Mr. Epi and provides an experimental climactic ending to another insane release from Coulier.