Lang naar gezocht en onlangs op Bloodshed gekocht. Dit moet liefhebbers van van old school death/grind zeker aanspreken.
In early 2007 Lasse (PHLEGETHON, HOODED MENACE etc.) and Jussi (EX-PHLEGETHON) formed VACANT COFFIN to satisfy their grinding need for fast, heavy, dirty and short songs. In other words they wanted to create a band that blasts out old school death/grind in the vein of old NAPALM DEATH, CARCASS and TERRORIZER to mention a few. Unfortunately Jussi had no time for Vacant Coffin so Lasse recorded "THE THRASHED SUPPER" -demo by himself in 2007. The line up was completed pretty soon after the demo was unleased as Lasse asked Pete for the bass and Pekka was found for the drums. After intense songwriting and rehearsing the band was ready to record their debut album. Horror obsessed US label RAZORBACK RECORDS released the furious 16-song album "SEWER SKULLPTURE" in December 2008. This recording now shows the band taking more inspiration from classic death metal acts such as early ENTOMBED and MORBID ANGEL. Vacant Coffin presents its death metal-ridden murky sound without losing the deeply rooted grindcore influences. Get in the coffin! It is sewer rot time!!!
www.myspace.com/vacantcoffin
Review
www.tuefelstomb.com:
I don’t think anyone can argue against 2008 having been a banner year for Razorback Records. The label released nothing but quality releases throughout the entire year. Somehow, despite the shit ton of material the label released, Billy Nocera and Co. managed to squeeze out two more slabs of decrepit, festering death metal within weeks of the year’s last gasping breath. One of those releases was the debut full length from Finnish death/grind metallers Vacant Coffin.
At first glance, one expects Sewer Skullpture to sound more like a death/doom album. Vacant Coffin‘s pedigree includes members of both Phlegethon (FIN) and fellow Razorback flag runners Hooded Menace. And to an extent, the album even opens with synth work not unlike Hooded Menace. From there, however, the comparisons cease. Billy described this as Razorback’s approximation to the early Earache Grindcrusher sound. I really can’t fight that description. In fact, anything less would be completely inaccurate. Vacant Coffin throws in nearly everything and the kitchen sink into Sewer Skullpture: for starters we got some Swedish death metal rhythms and hooks on “Razor Justice”, some grinding Carcass worship on “A Shuriken to the Face” and their more melodic fare with “Cadaver Sculptor”, and even energetic Napalm Death-esque riffing on “Posercrushing Crusade”. That’s just the tip of the ice berg; thematically, Sewer Skullpture is more or less “Everything You Even Remotely Enjoy About Death Metal and Grindcore: The Album Volume I – Complete Edition.” If someone were to come up to you and ask for recommendations on breaking into death metal and grindcore, you could simply give them Sewer Skullpture and then tell them that if they dig it, they should look for everything name-dropped surrounding that album. Literally.
That’s, of course, assuming Sewer Skullpture is any good. But I think at this point it’s pretty obvious where this is going: awesome pedigree with musicians that have proven themselves repeatedly, a label more reliable than laws of physics themselves, etc. And sure enough, Sewer Skullpture is solid as adamantium, as energetic as a pack of starved jungle island cannibals discovering a stranded, beached party of morbidly obese cuisine experts, and as well written and expertly crafted as any metal fan worth a dime can expect. This thing is everything you’ve come to expect from Billy and Company and then some.
Again, going back to the comment of just how much of a total listening package this is, I’m dead serious: this is the perfect opening punch to instructing someone into listening to proper death metal and grind. It hits all its influences dead on the marker, writes its riffs in such a way to make the sound their own, and is infused with such a quality that even after the death metal novice goes out and becomes experienced they can still enjoy Sewer Skullpture as much as the day they first listened to Vacant Coffin‘s debut.
