Like a vessel climbing the divine dominion, Coffin of Conviction glides through a sea of tranquility and turmoil.
The title track shoots off like a portal into Human’s Morrisound with a chorused undercurrent electricity of the fortress of Holdsworth. The track feels like acid raindrops cutting through the chrome windshield of a high speeding Stingray driven by R. Jarzombek. The string layers slide off like flakes of ice splitting against the zooming car. The rhythm drifts into a jagged wraparound shot of a bridge crumbling in the precipitation with the automobile being submerged by the elements.
“Headspace Extraction” leads off with an imposing bass line climbing out of a cement mixer and melting over the chains of an unsuspecting victim flung into the east river, with notes like bubbles of water rising to the surface as the muffled screams fade as a stack of liquid splits and parts while a tower-like edifice lifts off out of the flood.
“All Faults counters an ecstatic lead with the toil of a tribalistic tom groove that circles a spiral of spirits lifting you by the irises into the spaceship beam in the sky. The dialogue theme between the counterparts unravels into what feels like an argument between the lieutenant of the cloud vessel and an insubordinate inmate barking unintelligible profanities in the form of the piercing cymbal hits.
“Aboard the vessel—No Breath After Beauty” feels like the dancing vapors inside the cryogenic tank, accelerating and decelerating as they wriggle in yet another conference with each other. The language of the notes feels vibrant and alive.
“Subliminal Order” manically breaks free of the tank as the camera follows the vapors in discourse traversing an alchemic lab-like structure, with alien weaponry, slimy Giger-esque cables, buttons and dials covered in reflective residue. The new solo entity shrieks from the beyond pushing the vapors violently around the cockpit.
Shooting through an exhaust valve we arrive at “The Luxury of Disbelief” which zooms wildly around microchips, transistors and capacitors in a heady flight of a burning phoenix through an event horizon corridor; the path is dimly lit with slithers of luminosity of the hit of the snare or bass note refracting out into the darkness.
The light transforms back into a gas as it circles the dewy flight deck for “Light from the Zenith”. The crew is nowhere to be found with empty spacesuits strewn about. As the ship slowly traverses the galaxy—the stars scrape the reflections in the blinking monitors and the cracked glass of the cabin. We float in the cold cosmos alone as the thrusters occasionally fire off another recourse.
There is both an earthly and a celestial element to this album. To imagine that this is the modern answer to what Varney would have posited with Shrapnel in the 80s would probably both arrive as a compliment and an insult to the extraterrestrial intelligence of these compositions and would likely be a misnomer.
After 25 years as a band, Hufnagel states in the VoS interview — the aim is “… always striving to make the new record different from the last […] trying to not be indulgent and allow space with sparse playing”, that’s the constant battle in composition. One would note that turning the arrangements into vital plasmic-like structures gives this the space of breath, and the singularity of thought a Prog-fan and non-Prog-fan alike would connect with on a deep level. As busy as the amphibian shell of the structures may seem, inside the cave lurks a living flare with stirring particles from the whole of the periodic table. This work is a floating exchange of the osmosis of elements and warrants multiple listens to truly understand the breadth of their power.
