If you love Hellhammer, Autopsy, Celtic Frost and Winter then Coffins is definitely your band. “Mortuary In Darkness” is a Doom riddled sludge carnival that creaks with all the splendor of the USS Arizona shrieking amidst exploding rivets and plumes of gas lit ocean in a descent to the pit of Pearl Harbor. Guitar is downtuned low enough to be a buzzing upright bass. Lurching riffs trickle off strings like a droplet of water slithering down an icicle. This style of play is ominous, but it is offset brilliantly by terrifying up-tempo shifts of Celtic Frost fame. In those moments, listeners are treated to filthy irreverent muck. Riffage sticks to flesh with the resiliency of oily garage floor grit pock marking a bare back, and lively power chords are almost sleazy.
Vocals cough out of lungs likely stained with cancer. Actually, I can almost smell esophagus when I hear that singing and the ol patented Tom G. Warrior “Ooh” against Hellhammer passages gives the music a rocking vibration that counterbalances the horrid minimalism of “Mortuary In Darkness.” Bass is damned portentous and that listless plucking in the opening of “Black End” has the uncanny feel of the soundtrack to the remake of The Thing starring Kurt Russell. Drums are truculently played without blast beats. Instead, listeners are treated to an 80’s punk approach across the kit during faster parts, and in snail sections, a hypnotic sonority of rhythms pulses the kit in torpid patterns like a squadron of vultures circling a carcass in rigorous precision.
Coffins has done extremely well in meshing gloomy fuzzy funeral Doom with noxious bloodcurdling Celtic Frost veneration. The music is primordial, lumbering, and bottomless… Sunken ships surely would attest to the fact that Coffins sounds exactly like one of their hulking hulls scraping and scratching reef walls in an eerie clamor of iron meeting limestone during a listless plummet to the murky ocean floor. And as usual, Razorback Records is responsible for releasing then repressing and re-releasing this behemoth of gloom. So crank “Mortuary In Darkness” to 10 on yer receiver, smoke a massive bowl, and suffocate in the sofa cause Coffins is certified muck.
By Mike Lidia
