Crystal Coffin – The Curse of Immortality
Release Date: 31st October 2023
Label: A Beast in the Field
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Black Metal, Prog, Ambient/Electronic, Post-Black Metal.
FFO: Hath, Moonlight Sorcery, Hooded Menace, Kvaen.
Review By: Rick Farley
Vancouver, Canada’s Crystal Coffin releases their highly anticipated third album, The Curse of Immortality through A Beast in the Field on Halloween day October 31st, 2023.
Crystal Coffin are a melodic black metal trio, formed in 2016 by Aron Shute (vocals, bass, guitars), Lenkyn Ostapovich (guitars, synths, piano, scapes, secondary vocals), and Rob Poirier (drums). Their infectious taste of dark, futuristic soundscapes combines modern black metal styles with influences from prog and ambient/electronic music while maintaining a fantastic storytelling aesthetic that is influenced through vintage horror, folk, history and sci-fi. Already releasing two well received albums, the band looks forward to the future, a future that’s tenebrous, harsher, and more abrupt than before.
Thematically, The Curse of Immortality is loosely based on a protagonist whose failed suicide attempts have placed him into a rehabilitation centre, wherein clandestine medical personnel experiment on the captured and unconscious patients at night in chambers below. Through a combination of cryogenetics, evil rites, and state control, the subject involuntarily becomes the first successful competed case for verified immortality – a life that will no longer require death.
Musically, The Curse of Immortality’s intoxicating mix of unrestrained melodic black metal and mesmerizing progressive atmosphere is ominous, heavy, and otherworldly. Not so much progressive in the sense of crazy musicianship, although these three musicians are quite skilled, but way more so in the moods and feelings evoked through each track. Emotionally this album is a brutal piece of cosmic blackness, spidery veined and extending in different directions, it elicits all the doomy dreariness, but still somehow manages to sound uplifting and hopeful at the same time. This entire record will affect your state of mind in such a way that you may lose yourself for its forty-two-minute duration. Whether doused in enlightenment or haunting darkness, I mean that in the best possibly way. Meticulous detail in the blackened sounds morph and shift between harsh vocals, droning airiness, second wave black metal and deep heavy ambience.
The space tinged synths of Final Breaths surge over double bass and sweeping tremolo picked guitars with mood inducing chord changes. It’s airy, ethereal, and mammoth in sound. The wall of guitars are waves of blackened tranquillity washing over your body and seizing your mind. The combination of screechy growls and cleanly sung passages are complimentary and convey an anxiousness in the track.
Cryogenesis is a raging, supernova charged burst of blast beats and chunky riffs. The track is filled with a droning quality that never gets stale. The guitars grab you, sedate you and never let go. The swelling bassline accelerates underneath, never easing up the quickened pace. The continuous blasting keeps the high energy fully fleshed out.
The albums final track, The Closing of the Crystal Coffin, is an ambient instrumental piece that engages everything that this band is about. The experimentation, the ranging moods, and the journey to get there. Synths that swell eerily in between huge mood inducing chord changes, drums that start electronic and lead to real ones that are thick and powerful. Beautiful piano passages and heavy rapid paced guitars lead to a finality that makes one wonder where this story ends or is this just a new beginning.
The Curse of Immortality is a full throttle black metal album presented in the modern day that feels strangely accessible; still influenced by the past and still extremely harsh and ugly. The mastery of song crafting and evoking different frames of mind here is exceptional. This is an easy recommend for anyone on the fence about black metal and how it’s supposed to sound. Crystal Coffin proves black metal can sound modernly produced, break a few barriers, and still be emotionally charged even without the corpse paint and theatrics. 
(4.5 / 5)
