From Corners Unknown
From Corners Unknown
From Corners Unknown
#170 | Album Review | Coffin Apartment – Coffin Apartment
1 hour 7 minutes Posted Jun 29, 2020 at 2:15 pm.
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Though formed in early 2018, the moniker of the Portland-based progressive metal trio, Coffin Apartment, reads a bit like a fragment of a prophecy given the current circumstances around the globe. We’ve been shut away in our respective abodes for about one-quarter of 2020 thus far and the Groundhog Day syndrome has yet to alleviate. Granted, Connor’s and my own day-to-day existence was quite mundane before all of this transpired, but rambling about music has become a sort of mental oasis amidst the tides of tedium. And when the self-titled debut from Coffin Apartment hit my inbox in mid-April amidst the turmoil, we thought it to be an odd coincidence. Thus we acted upon it.
Coffin Apartment is actually a reference to subdivided housing units found in Hong Kong and other densely populated cities that are just large enough to fit a single bed for its resident. Their flavor of progressive metal can mostly be encompassed under the sprawling canopies of death metal, sludge, punk, hardcore, and a dash of psychedelia. A sundry of other timbres permeate their bludgeonings, but on the whole, you can anticipate a raw deluge of trenchant riffs and jolting tempo shifts made murky by infernal wails. Their kinetic transitions are potent and airtight, and these even offer up some deranged hooks to make the shellacking a titch more palatable. Furthermore, the dynamic fervor exuding their tracks comes as little surprise given that each Coffin Apartment member originates from relatively long-established bands in the Pacific Northwest region (A Volcano, Polst/Toim, Same-Sex Dictator). Though their debut dropped back in February 2019, we were both dumbfounded by the grottiness entombed therein. Since we are also at wit’s end, we thought it to be a perfect opportunity to embrace entropy and chat about a record that suitably embodies how we both feel about our respective ramshackle dwellings. Thank you so much for tuning in.