ALBUM REVIEW: Coffins – Beyond The Circular Demise

Japanese Death-Doom legends COFFINS are back with a brand new full length record, out now via Relapse Records. Anticipation and expectation for this album are both equally high.

Grisly guitars churn out a deathly blend of crushing riffs over pounding drums, ready for the meaty vocals to take action. The upbeat grooves that immediately kick in are mesmerising with a brutality that we have all come to expect from a legendary band like Coffins and boy do they deliver. The classic drive of the music should be appealing to fans of Asphyx, Incantation or Bolt Thrower with a slower, crawling take on a monolithic old school Death Metal sound. The band chugs through song after song of primitively catchy and energetic extremity that is packed with a morbid atmosphere and endless supply of enticingly grooving instrumentals with a thunderous bass that grasps you with each bar of gruesome riff madness. With guttural vocals so low they blend into the music beautifully, it is like being hit with a sledgehammer of pure Death-Doom might and it is glorious. Coffins do not fail at delivering a concoction of what is expected from them with huge doomy atmospherics, upbeat punchy mids and a wall of savagely tight production that ties the band together for maximum devastation. This albums length is perfect with plenty of time for it to grow and ensnare you with all that they have to offer and plentiful variety that never dulls, while not becoming monotonous or overzealous. Coffins have delivered some of their most obliterating material to date and a definite candidate for Death-Doom albums of the year which is a marvellous feat with so many killer releases dropping. This album will pound your skull to dust with a fierce array of monolithic instrumentals, sparsely growled vocals and well-balanced, stomping songwriting. This swampy opus blasts out all the best things about Death Metal with little faltering from the band with some ferocious musicianship to back it up. Total gut-spilling excellency from some of the genres best musicians with an epic flow through diversely decimating songs and limitless grooves that will keep you headbanging from start to end. -8/10