Metal Storm logo
Extremity - Coffin Birth review



Reviewer:
7.8

20 users:
7.1
Band: Extremity
Album: Coffin Birth
Release date: July 2018


01. Coffin Birth / A Million Witches
02. Where Evil Dwells
03. Grave Mistake
04. Umbilicus
05. For Want Of A Nail
06. Occision
07. Like Father Like Son
08. Misbegotten / Coffin Death

Old-school death metal worship isn't anything new and very often feels like an unnecessary rehash. Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes a supergroup can do it.

I wouldn't be to quick to brand Extremity as a supergroup right away, but certainly what Extremity have going for them is the cumulative experience of its members, all of them going as far back as the '90s and even the '80s. We've got Shelby Lermo of Vastum and Ulthar, Marissa Martinez-Hoadley of Cretin, and Aesop Decker of Agalloch and Vhöl. With members so old that they started their own Death Metal Dads podcast, they're completely justified to go as deep as they can to death metal's roots.

Leaving the reinvention of the wheel for another time, Coffin Birth is purely about the riff. And the riff you shall get. The instrumental prowess of both guitarists is clearly heard, less in the overly technical sense and more in the dead-raising, acid-spitting, ocean-boiling riffs and solos. It's also quite refreshing to hear Aesop on something that isn't black metal and you can clearly feel his sense of groove rather than the endless blasts you'd expect from this genre - not to mention the grotesque duet vocals that complete the sound. There to make everything better and more *insert some death metal adjective like rotten* is the very raw production.

What does set Extremity aside from the endless OSDM worship bands is that, while you can obviously give an endless list of bands that influenced this album, Coffin Birth doesn't overtly emulate any of those, instead creating its own sound derived from and influenced by said bands, like Dismember, Autopsy and Bolt Thrower. Also true to the genre's origins, there are subtle hints of crust punk and death-doom as well, the former more in the vocals and the latter more in the riffing. Instead of just celebrating what a massive genre old-school death metal was, this also celebrates all that it can still be.

Coffin Rebirth will obviously never touch the greatness of the albums it pays tribute to, but it does its part to show that the genre is still alive. Although, being death metal, it's quite oxymoronic to call it alive, it's living dead.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 9
Songwriting: 7
Originality: 6
Production: 8





Written on 06.09.2018 by Doesn't matter that much to me if you agree with me, as long as you checked the album out.



Hits total: 3228 | This month: 6