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Coffins: Buried death
08/03/12 || BamaHammer
Doom has never been my thing. One huge reason that I love brutal
death metal so much is that it has to be well executed in order to work.
Guitar riffs have to be played with precision, drumming has to happen
like clockwork, and and the bass is optional has to do just
the right thing at just the right time. Even the vocals must employ a
high degree of skill in order to master syllabic rhythms. If any of
those instruments or skills are performed with any degree of
carelessness, the whole package sounds sloppy. The doom genre generally
doesn’t value those same characteristics with the amount of
scrupulousness. If I’m going to enjoy something that could be described
as doom-ish, it usually will need to integrate death metal influences to
some extent.
Coffins, as far as I can tell, do just that. The overall sound of the album could be described as massively heavy, and it’s apparent from the very first moment you hear it that you’re in for a plodding doom-death beating of epic proportions. The guitar sound is just flat-out unique. It’s so disgustingly messy and splattery, you would swear that there’s no way you could decipher any musical attributes from it. However, somehow all the chords, chunks, and notes are plain as day. Everything is has a distortion pedal in front of it. Even the distortion pedal has a distortion pedal. The end result is one of the most insanely cool guitar tones I’ve heard in a while. Koreeda’s bass is also provides a few moments of excitement, occasionally attempting Geezer-esque runs behind the massive wall of guitar fuzz that accentuate certain parts of the music. And yes, it too has distortion caked on it nice and thick.
The drums and vocals are definitely what I would call the album’s weak spots. Drum-wise, this type of music is simply not my thing, but for what it’s worth, they serve the purpose here. I’m a big believer in tight, tasteful drum parts, and You’s drumming is just a little too sludgy for my taste. As for the vocals, they aren’t necessarily bad, but they aren’t that great either. After a while they do tend to become a little repetitious in their general sound. It probably wouldn’t hurt him to venture out of the guttural realms once in a while and attempt a high-pitched scream or two (or maybe even, dare I say, try a clean sound) just to break up the monotony.
The songs themselves are actually very catchy and extremely groovy. If you’ve never heard Coffins before and like sludgy, mid-paced stoner death metal, you should definitely check them out. The most appealing thing about the album is in the undeniable groove it brings for essentially every second it plays. They never try anything ambitiously fast or decidedly “brutal,” but what they do give you is a full 44-minutes of head-rocking, foot-tapping groove that’s really enjoyable, if not overly technically impressive.
In the end, if you like stoner/doom/sludge-ish death metal and you’ve never heard Coffins, you should give this a shot. It’s not really my cup o’ corpses, but I can definitely see the appeal.
- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: 20 Buck Spin
- Website: http://www.coffins.jp
- Band
- Uchino: vocals, guitar
- Koreeda: bass
- You: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Under The Stench
- 02. Buried Death
- 03. Cadaver Blood
- 04. Altars In Gore
- 05. Mortification To Ruin
- 06. Deadly Sinners
- 07. Purgatorial Madness
- 08. The Frozen Styx
