Review by Sonny for Coffins - Sinister Oath (2024)

Coffins are one of those bands who are treated with contempt by a vast swathe of the metal-buying (or more accurately, metal-streaming) public for adhering to a formula they are comfortable with and which they replicate throughout their career as the primary means for expressing their artistic intentions. Bands like Coffins' refusal to continually push the envelope and experiment with new modes of expression seems to rub a significant number of people up the wrong way, but you know what, fuck 'em, I love the determination of these guys to populate the world with soul-crushing, cavernous and guttural OSDM, so if you are one of those people, then you know where you can shove your contempt because neither I nor Uchino and the guys could give a shit.

The riffs are thick and meaty with a crunchy, yet unctuous guitar sound that is derived from such purveyors of old-school, cavernous death metal as Autopsy and Asphyx, although it's more modern and cleaner production does actually downplay the echoing quality of older releases, even so, Coffins' riffs still hit like a punch to the lower gut region. As is usual, they walk the tightrope between conventional death metal and death doom, not being shy in slowing down the tempo to ominously hulking and doom-ridden, yet changing up to faster, d-beat-driven moshpit-frenzy fare at the flick of a metaphorical switch. There is no flashiness from these guys, they don't try to embellish their sound or push the envelope in any way, everything they do is effectively functional, with a set vision that requires a particular, some may say basic, style of playing which they have perfected over the years to the degree where few can pull off this particular style better - maybe more skillfully, but rarely as effectively. Uchino's vocals are crusty and uber-gutteral, as if he is trying to replicate the sound Godzilla would produce if he was the vocalist with a death metal band rather than a world-saving (or destroying) prehistoric throwback.

At the end of the day, this is nothing more or less than "don't fuck with us" old-school, doomy death metal originally dragged from the pits of hell at the dawn of the 1990s and if that is your bag, then give this a listen, if it isn't then don't because there is no reason why this would change your mind, although how any death metal fan can't be fired-up by a track like "Domains of Black Miasma" is well beyong my capability to understand.