Coffin Texts - The Tomb of Infinite Ritual

Coffin Texts

The Tomb of Infinite Ritual

2012 Dark Descent Records
This album has been a long time coming. Coffin Texts' debut was released in 2000, and they've been very quiet since. I suppose that's not much of a surprise, since bassist/vocalist Robert Cardenas (who just happens to be the driving force in the band) both has been and still is involved with a variety of other projects, including the reactivated Malice, a short stint in Diabolic, Agent Steel, as well as his other band Engrave. At the same time, drummer Emilio Marque has been busy with Sadistic Intent, Asesino and Possessed.  During all this time, there have been a lot of rumors about the second Coffin Texts album. It's being released next year, they're in the studio right now, they've signed to such-and-such label. None of that matters anymore, because we've finally got the second album.  Is this what would have been released ten years ago? Or even two years ago? I know not the answer to that, and it is irrelevant anyway.  Chances are that a lot of reviews are going to again focus on the lyrics about ancient Egypt. All I'm going to say is that I don't give a fuck that Nile does the same thing, or that they arguably do it better.  Mercyful Fate, Metallica and Iron Maiden all had songs about the pharaohs, mummies and the afterlife long before anyone else did.  So fuck off to that subject. Let's talk about the music instead. If there's one thing I hear when I listen to Coffin Texts, it's this:  they play a wholly American sounding style of death metal. I'm talking in the purest sense here. No thrash metal, no black metal, and no doom metal has made its way into their sound. There was a point in time at the dawn of the 1990s when you could tell where a band was from by their sound. This is sometimes still true today (like with Swedish bands).  But a sound like this one? Unmistakably American in origin, and since we're talking early 90s here, that would mean a combination of Florida and New York. In other words, the bastard offspring of early Morbid Angel, Immolation, and Incantation.  I'm well aware that such combinations have been heard before. But very rarely are they done so well, with a result of a band greater than the sum of its influences, rather than being merely a derivative of them. In closing, I'm going to appeal to the members of Coffin Texts and ask that they not wait until 2024 to release a third album.