Like most of the great bands festering within the death metal underground today, Coffin Rot is a band I first became acquainted with thanks to my good pals in Molder. Both bands came to fruition in 2017, and by 2018, they were corrupting eardrums in unity, thanks to a crushing split that featured two originals and a cover from each. Molder covered fellow Joliet freaks Morgue’s “Repulsive Death”, while Coffin Rot took on the devastating death/thrash classic, “Hung, Drawn and Quartered” by Cancer. 2019’s A Monument to the Dead quickly followed, and Coffin Rot has been keeping the ball rolling really ever since.
Although it doesn’t feel like half a decade since we last heard from these mutants, they’ve sure made up for lost time with their latest offering, Dreams of the Disturbed. If their shift over to Maggot Stomp raised concerns of the band incorporating “-core” influences or maturing their sound, fear not. If there’s any maturation to be found on this release, it’s catchier hooks and emphasized brutality. Otherwise, this is as meat and potatoes of an old school death metal worship album a headbanger could ask for in 2024, fitting comfortably alongside the latest onslaughts from Cardiac Arrest and Obscene.
Clocking in at 8 songs and a little over 32 minutes, Dreams keeps it short and anything but sweet, bludgeoning the listener like a Scott Burns produced effort circa 1991. The relentless “Slaughtered Like Swine” sets the tone for this utterly brutal release with its gory riffage and dense atmosphere. There’s certainly nods to early Cannibal Corpse, but without sounding like a blatant ripoff. One can’t help but notice shades of thrash at its most unhinged on cuts like “Perverted Exhumation” and “Living Cremation”, before death metal became overwrought with blasts, while the creepily catchy “Lurking in the Cemetery” gives off serious Autopsy vibes.
“Hands of Death” and “Predator Becomes Prey” could pass for the unholy bastard spawn of Butchered at Birth (1991) and Cause of Death (1990), nailing the old school death metal aesthetic in terms of riffs, arrangement, and sonic attack, but again, without sounding like a copy/paste rehash. Closing it all out is the eerie “The Howling Man”, which really melds everything great about Coffin Rot into one songs. One part thrashing insanity, maggot-infested death, and devastating graveyard crawl riffs, it’s the figurative final nail in this metallic coffin, sealing the doom of listeners like you and me.
Perhaps the fact that it’s a gloomy, rainy day here in Chicago is warping my perception of this here album, but I don’t think so. Coffin Rot have done it yet again. Dreams is indeed a death metal dream come true, guaranteed to disturb the comforted and comfort the disturbed. The riffs are meatier, the songs are deadlier, and the sound is tremendous, as if the music itself could leap out of your speakers and murder you firsthand. Something tells me we’ll hear from these lunatics sooner than five years, but in the event that we don’t, this will definitely hold us over until then.
7 out of 10
Label: Maggot Stomp
Genre: Death Metal
For fans of: Autopsy, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary