Coffin Nail - The Hanged Man
After 2022’s stellar Years of Lead, anticipation was high for Coffin Nail’s next offering. A blend of grindcore, crust punk, and war metal, Years of Lead was a merciless behemoth of staggering proportions. Breakneck and stifling, it contained both unbridled fury of grindcore and the overhanging dread of war metal. It felt at times a spiritual successor to the dense multitudes of Dragged Into Sunlight; at others a cavernous beast all its own.
Luckily I did not have to wait long. In 2023, Coffin Nail released The Hanged Man, an eleven song chasm so vast and so dark that it was, at times, difficult to see the end. As putrid as its predecessor yet evermore transcendental, The Hanged Man sees Coffin Nail at their most sepulchral.
“Strangling Gallows” begins the ritual in earnest with a brisk foray into the depths of depravity. Straightforward in conception only, the sounds of early war metal-era Beherit are broken up by the atonal shrieking of cavernous death metal guitars. “From Sapric to the Sulphuric” then follows with the haunting melodies of a funeral dirge. Initially drenched in the death doom of early ‘90s Autopsy before sliding into barbarous war metal once again.
While Years of Lead was more beholden to the stringent genre trappings of the grind and war metal it was derived from, The Hanged Man has no such qualms. “Hammers and Chains”, a blistering shroud of deathgrind, peels away around the halfway mark to present an atonal, incorporeal black metal beast more akin to Blut Aus Nord then Blasphemy. With “Due Note in Nero”, Coffin Nail even dares to dedicate an entire song solely to ambiance.
Of course this does not last long. The immediately preceding “Caverngrinder” and “Brood Parasites” find Coffin Nail unrelenting once again. “These are Dead, They Feel Not” once again harkens to the monstrous sounds of Autopsy, albeit with more of fellow Pacific Northwesterners Hissing added to the mix. “Lion of Light” then closes with the album with a final death metal-skewed assault, adopting the groove and grime of those early pioneers.
As meticulous as it is ugly, The Hanged Man shows Coffin Nail at their most bold. Ambiance hangs heavy on this album as swathes of war metal and grindcore are peeled away to reveal a bleak, misanthropic horror underneath. Visceral and ugly, The Hanged Man is a perpetual nightmare that’s essential listening for all fans of heavy music.
