Gaunt with the knowledge of the night and abysm-secreted infinitum I am plunged into terror, eyes glazed over with blackest blindness. Barely managing to claw and scratch loose a morbid scream from my paralyzed neck the contagion of horror shakes itself over me throughout the room, all windows shattered by the din of an old madness returned. An astral possession by the prayers of an ancient, unspeakable horror grips me as Scottish death metal quartet Coffin Mulch burn and barge through this impressive, somewhat unexpected debut full-length album. Tinged with the reek of easily identified classicist tastes and given spirited, blazing abandon per some supernatural insight ‘Spectral Intercession‘ serves shocking energy enough that it cannot help but inspire with its mortified and surrealistic grooves, impressive with charismatic insight rather than dry bluntness. The available density of sharp-cut action quickly realizes and fine-tunes a signature touch upon the ground covered thus far, tailoring their wares to the speed and detail demanded by the most serious and insatiable minds of (mostly Swedish style) death metal fandom.

Coffin Mulch officially formed in Glasgow circa 2018 between folks who’d played in a broad mix of bands in the past, everything from metalpunk to doom and beyond. The most notable thing I’d picked up on while digging through their preliminary releases leading up to this debut is this unsure sense of direction despite their first demo (‘Demo‘, 2019) being fairly set somewhere between early Entombed and Asphyx‘ debut to some degree and their first official mLP (‘Septic Funeral‘, 2021) meandering a bit more, finding its jogging death/doom metal adjacent rhythms in what I’d considered the grinding HM-2 driven headspace occupied by obscure groups like Nirvana 2002. My review at the time of release was tentative, I wasn’t sure there was any interesting potential in the guitar work but I liked some of the over the top aspects of their sound which weren’t as muted and milled-out as a lot of nowadays ‘old school’ death metal in the Swedish style. As it turned out they’d gone from two guitarists on the first demo down to one on the EP and now for the full-length they’ve swapped in a new guitarist altogether adding Derek Milne of stoner/doom metal group Forever Machine into the sole guitar slot. Of course this has changed their sound somewhat drastically from my point of view, injecting a sort of early grindcore snarl and Nihilist-esque energetic push into their gig.

Based on what Coffin Mulch had to say about their first single/cassette release (‘Into the Blood‘, 2022) leading up to this full-length the new material was described as more direct with bigger hooks and beefed-up production values and this has generally panned out. Anyone looking for the slow and grooved out side of the band per their first EP will still find it (per “Mental Suicide” and a couple other pieces) but they’ve hit upon a decidedly more fiery paced, hammered-at and unexpectedly sharp result which eclipses previous material in a notable way. As an ancient sounding, almost primitively captured record ‘Spectral Intercession‘ smacks of horrified screams, gut-buzzing energetics and a bit of a Dan Swanö assisted pierce through the haze which feels vitally death metal beyond the cold-cloned death metal we’ve become inundated with of late. Comparative superiority in terms of traditional death metal impact isn’t the whole of the appeal here, though, in fact you won’t find any mundane worship on this record so much as the full listen reeks of inspiration, a bursting-out energy which feels like it’d hit circa 1991, again tapping into the best parts of ‘Mental Funeral‘, ‘Left Hand Path‘ and even a deep waft of ‘Harmony Corruption‘ down the line.

Opener and title track “Spectral Intercession” kicks things off with a lung-emptying scream or two and a warped pull-in before they get to a pretty damned stomping introductory riff, right off the bat you can feel the hollow and metallic resonance chamber of the vocals and the almost artificial strike of the drums, sounding like an 80’s pad kit when it comes time to hammer a blast or lean into a fill. This’d sounded ‘old school’ Swedish death in an early Sunlight Studios sense, clearly spiking above an cassette trader level in terms of clarity but sounding slightly artificial a la Comecon‘s ‘Megatrends in Brutality‘. The opener does its job hyping up the grime of their classic guitar tone and offers a few knotted-up grooves to start but the real drop-in for the album comes with “Into the Blood“, the big single and the the truly mutant statement from the band as they wear their freshly shed skin like a cape, emerging green-slicked and chittering with a particularly nasty HM-2 juiced riff. The escalating strain from vocalist Al M. instantly feels authentic, not only in the sense that it lands like an early Swedish death metal level pained bark but that the vocalist continues to go hard over the top throughout the full listen.

Side A upholds its flawless streak with the well representative “Mental Suicide” likely the song to give the most consistent pause to the listener on repeat listens for its greasy doomed opening and the blasted outro, a sensation which is reversed and realized doubly quick on “In the Grip of Death” wherein those two pieces constitute the strongest Autopsy influence on the record while also reprising the grinding whip of “Carnivorous Subjugation” from their mLP; Simply stated with an inelegant punkish kick, delivered with screaming horror and barked down a sewer drain it would be fair to say that Side A has already been redeeming as a memorable and wild-assed death metal showing from an inspired band who’ve bent and tributed a certain tradition with their own touch of surrealistic madness but they’ve still a bit more of themselves to show on the second half.

“Fall of Gaia” admittedly takes us somewhere expected to start, the crusted and d-beaten side of early Swedish death metal but towards the end of the song we start to take the hint, that grindcore fueled militaristic battery which’d already featured on the first half now becomes even more prominent (especially on the hallucinatory “Gateway to the Unseen”) as a way of cranking out more movement and landing a few more violent hits. This type of fill combined with a thin sort of ‘old school’ demo level drum sound reads as a point of authenticity to me and perhaps because I’ve never lost that obsession with old Earache grind and crossover but if it reads a bit artificial to you consider cranking the volume as this recording does end up far more dynamic than it seems. At a half hour long Coffin Mulch have shown a great deal of variety and all at high impact, if there is a song that’d felt redundant it is probably “Gateway to the Unseen” as they’ve hit that Murder Squad level of backwards ‘Mental Funeral‘ groove as a point of purpose on this record a few times at that point but I don’t think the record is long enough to warrant any such complaint. The running order is especially well-considered as we reach the end with “Eternal Enslavement”, a recap of where we’ve been and where the second half of the experience hit hardest as it’d leaned into a fine mixture of half-speed doomed grunting and grinding hits.

Every year there is at least one record that does the balls out Boss HM-2 driven ‘old school’ death metal idea right, weilding that weapon in a new or simply inspired way which escapes banal overdrive abuse. So far in 2023 Coffin Mulch are the ones to handle that nuclear radiation best, using it as a tool to guide the mind towards both referential nostalgia for some and showing ’em how it can be tempered to give a raw meanness to already aggressive, energetic death metal. The punkish spirit of the band shines through this slightly more refined state, still reading like a prime underground expression which is vitally “now” but entrenched in the still exciting extremity of three decades past and this all comes without the feeling of pandering or strangely coy reference that we so often find in similar yet less soul-bound chainsaw disturbances of the ilk. They’ve really dented my skull with this one and made a fan of me herein. A high recommendation.

NOTE: Vinyl is on vocalist’s label At War With False Noise, Cassette on Dry Cough/Gurgling Gore.

http://www.memento-mori.es/release.php?id=162&type=1&p=1

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