Coffins – March of Despair
Japan’s grotesque sludge merchants Coffins are one of those bands that I’m elated with releasing the same material over and over again. It is a formula that I’m fine with and often find myself in the mood for. They so skillfully take a menacingly heavy death doom framework with predominantly deep and sick vocals, and mix it up with various tempo shifts and a higher register scream. “March of Despair” is their latest and a lengthy EP that may be staunchly set in its filthy ways, but Coffins possess a deft knack for breaking up their unapologetic hammer attack and detuned/on the verge of going out of tune sound canvas that lies thick in the air like blow flies descending on a hog carcass in summer. Powerchords dig like a shovel into sacred ground as on ‘Grotesque Messiah’ for a groove that is suffocatingly evil and dense, only to erode into a traditional doom/stoner, note based plod on the dank track ‘Carpet of Bones’. Every bend in the strings and crushing rhythm yearns for your victimized corpse to be buried and it is this union of concept (sound/lyrical content/tempo) and band name that makes Coffins the total package for those of you who like your death and doom to be dripping with a pungent organic material. Coffins end ‘March of Despair’ with a cover of Death’s “Corpsegrinder”, effortlessly taking this ancient building block of the death metal genre, and making it their own. Sick and entertaining. -Marty
Hammerheart Records
Worm Gear 