AN NCS PREMIERE: COFFIN ROT — “HANDS OF DEATH”

When we last devoted attention in our pages to the works of Coffin Rot from Portland, Oregon, the occasion was the impending release of their split with Molder in 2018. Much has happened to the band since then, including the release of their 2019 debut album, A Monument to the Dead, and the expansion of their lineup from founders Hayden Johnson (vocals) and Derek Johnson (drums) and guitarist/bassist Tre Guertner to also include bassist Brandon Martinez-Woodall and second guitarist Jonathan Quintana (from Decrepisy, Thanamagus, and Ascended Dead).

Now, this quintet has prepared a second album. Fittingly entitled Dreams of the Disturbed, it’s set for release by Maggot Stomp on September 20th. As you’ll discover, it’s not just the lineup that has changed since 2018, but the array of ingredients Coffin Rot have brought into their sound, and the array of skin-crawling moods they’ve thereby created on this new full-length.

As proof of this, today we premiere the new album’s second single, “Hands of Death“.

It’s not just the music that will make your skin crawl. The subject matter will do that too. Here’s how the band introduce the song:

“You wanted fast? You got it. This song is about the Florida Everglades murder cult that serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole claimed to be members of upon their capture. Although never proven to be real, the claims of human sacrifice and ritualistic slaughter are haunting. Take a trip with us deep into the swamps and listen as the alligators feast on the corpses of discarded victims.”

In musically depicting these hideous imaginings, Coffin Rot do bring on the slaughter and the swamp. But the musical killing sprees, though plainly deranged, aren’t primitive and unimaginative. Instead, the fretwork is intricate in its rapidly darting and writhing forms of dementia, the bass-work is nimble and prominent, and the drumming is constantly variable.

No doubt, the vocals are monstrously cruel and fanatical, and the tremolo’d whir of the riffage sounds like the maniacal scything of body parts. The soloing also sounds ecstatic, though we don’t forget the perversions that bring the joy despite how exhilarating the solos are.

The song does also lead us through dismal slogging stomps through the burial murk, groaning and sucking us downward, though the maniacal jubilation of the music won’t be squelched. It keeps coming back bombastically, to jam live electrodes into our necks.

 

 

Dreams Of The Disturbed was recorded at The Underworld Studio with Charlie Koryn (Ascended Dead, Decrepisy), mixed and mastered at Subterranean Watchtower Studios with Damien Herring (Horrendous), and completed with cover art by Wyrmwalk.

Maggot Stomp will release Dreams Of The Disturbed on CD, LP, MC, and digital formats on September 20th. Find preorders at the label webshop HERE and Bandcamp where the first single “Perverted Exhumation” is streaming HERE.

FOLLOW COFFIN ROT:
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