(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of the third album by the Vancouver-based trio Crystal Coffin, which was just released yesterday.)
In my continued search for black metal that’s not quite the typical ’90s second wave sound that we all love/hate (choose whichever applies to you) I’m often intrigued by qualifying words like melodic, symphonic, or folky before the name of the subgenre. This time it’s the Canadian Crystal Coffin that’s caught my attention, a band that supposedly falls into the melodic group, if Metal Archives are to be believed. Their new album, The Curse of Immortality, will be released independently on the 31st of October, two years after the band’s previous album, The Starway Eternal, and that’s what I’ll be talking about today.
The first absolutely bizarre thing about this album is the cover art, which seems to show some sort of doctors who look suspiciously like images of death working in a sci-fi futuristic lab with vaguely humanoid bodies in vats. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I’ve seen quite a few comments from people who seemed to be turned off by this artwork on a black metal album. Not really a group of people you’re likely to accuse of openmindedness, black metal fans. Personally, I tend to welcome some diversity in sound as well as in the other parts of the release, so I’m generally counting this as a plus.
The first sounds seem to coincide with the album art. There’s some heavy breathing and it feels like some sort of a sinister ritual is taking place, but after only a few seconds this is replaced by a sonic onslaught as “Shadows Never Cast” really gets going.
The song is quite an odd mix of some older black metal tropes such as deliberately muddied mixing on the vocals and the band’s sound in general, but fairly modern instrumental patterns with the guitars certainly providing quite a bit of (rather repetitive) melody. There’s also the addition of the keyboards that add a certain layer of symphonics to the band’s sound.
Throughout the next song, “The Undead,” the band adds some solo guitar work, but overall there’s a continuous droning sound emanating from the band’s playing, which I’d prefer to see cleaned up a bit, at least at times, if nothing more for some diversity. In, “Final Breaths,” however, Crystal Coffin adds some cleans to complement the harsh vocals by the band’s vocalist and bassist, Aron Shute, which spices up the song and the album itself nicely and makes it the most interesting track on the album.
“The Curse of Immortality” isn’t a very long album, clocking in at 42:30, which is a shame as I wish the band would let the sound develop a bit more at times, maybe going into slightly more atmospheric waters, which they do kind of explore in “Rise,” which feels quite ominous at the beginning but then doesn’t really develop as well as I would have liked. This seems to be a bit of a pattern of the entire album, which, while promising, never reaches any massive highlights that would make it memorable or make you truly admire a certain section.
The album finishes with an instrumental piece, “The Closing of the Crystal Coffin,” and that’s generally fine but it strikes me as profoundly odd to finish an album with such a piece, as I’d expect some sort of a hard-hitting, elaborate song instead.
The slightly bewildered feelings I had at the start of this release are still with me. I can’t say this is a poor album, but it’s also not particularly amazing at any point. It almost feels as if the band itself don’t really know what direction they want to head in, and thus the end product suffers. Still, The Curse of Immortality seems like a release that could really appeal to a few people with its distinct melodic/symphonic and futuristic take on black metal (it’s really more death metal at times), and therefore it’s worth giving it a spin.
Line up:
Rob Poirier – drums
Lenkyn Ostapovich – guitars, keyboards
Aron Shute – vocals, bass
https://www.facebook.com/CrystalCoffinMetal/
https://crystalcoffin.bandcamp.com/album/the-curse-of-immortality
2 Responses to “CRYSTAL COFFIN: “THE CURSE OF IMMORTALITY””
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The piano that comes ion towards the end of that first song was an unexpected pleasure to hear. Best use of piano in a black metal song i ever heard. This album is really starting to grow on me. I wish the vocals were louder in the mix though.
I hear cool new nuances with every listen. The lyrics are outstanding. (a shame the vocals are so indistinctly low in the mix). i love this intriguing record now. The last song brings it down a notch though.