COFFINS
“Sinister Oath”
With literally shitloads of releases since 2000, Tokyo’s COFFINS have only released five prior studio albums before 2024’s “Sinister Oath”. Five years since “Beyond the Circular Demise”. But goddamn was it worth the wait. Consisting of Bungo Uchino (guitars), Satoshi Hikida (drums), Masafumi Atake (bass) and Jun Tokita (vocals), the band creates a sense of putridity unlike any other death/doom band. It’s no surprise that their new album, even after two and a half decades of releases, destroys everything in its path.
‘B.T.C.D.’ kicks off the album with it’s churning guitars and steady drumming in an instrumental that leads into ‘Spontaneous Rot’, a fucking powerful slow riff that soon creeps up a notch along with the guttural vocals that could scare the living shit out of Satan himself.
Anyone asks you what death metal’s all about? Hand’em this album. ‘Forced Disorder’ swaggers its take-no-shit attitude into the room before erupting into a blitzkrieg that, live, is certain to destroy the fucking venue with its pit of metal maniacs. And then their’s ’Sinister Oath, a fucking slumbering, filthy beast of a track. The guitars sound like they’re buried in mud. The vocals are deep and abominably staggering. The drums are pounding and excruciatingly powerful.
There’s not much better than this. ‘Chain’is sort of old school with its hyper-speed riffs, leading into ‘Everlasting Spiral’, an eight minute journal into pure doom; a rampaging, swirling mass of devastation that never lets up. ‘Things Infestation’ is a hydraulic, turbo-charged track as ‘Headless Monarch is annihilating in every sense of the word. Final track ‘Domains of Black Miasma’ is simply crushing. From beginning to end, there’s no time for a breath of air.
COFFINS is no-nonsense doom/death that’ll crack your goddamn skull in two without thinking twice. Twenty four years and counting, COFFINS reigns supreme.
-David Simonton