Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Uncoffined - Ritual Death and Funeral Rites

Uncoffined
Ritual Death and Funeral Rites
2013 Memento Mori
Quite often, when a band plays a mix of death and doom metal, they tend to focus more on the "death" side of things and not the "doom." It's a very fine line to walk between the two, and the result ends up as death metal with doom elements. Nothing wrong with that, but in the case of the UK's Uncoffined, they did the opposite.  Uncoffined play doom with death metal elements.  In other words, "doom/death" instead of "death/doom."  The most obvious death metal element of course, would be the vocals of Kat Shevil (also of Winds of Genocide). For those who concern themselves with trivialities such as having a woman on vocals, know this... Kat is on the same level as Sharon Bascovsky of Derketa. For me at least, that's the "gold standard."  She's also not one-dimensional, as the majority of her male counterparts these days seem to be.  With that out of the way, let's move on to other things.  Lots of distortion on the instruments, but somehow I thought Uncoffined was going to have an even dirtier sound than this.  Maybe the song I heard on YouTube was off a demo. If so, then please go that direction for your second album!  Guitar solos?  Yes, they have them, but they're done in an early Paradise Lost style... simple, effective, and if you get distracted, you just might miss them.  Almost forgot... the album closes with a cover of Revelation's "Frustrations."  Kind of a departure from the lyrical focus on death and the occult, but it still fits in very well and Uncoffined make it their own.

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