ALBUM REVIEW: Eight Coffin Nails – Alghazanth

Finland’s ALGHAZANTH have decided to call it a day after close to a quarter of a century in the black metal scene. Their brand of dark and powerful symphonic black metal has made them one of the most impressive acts in Finland’s underground extreme metal scene, and pairs the bleak and aggressive tones of melodic black metal with epic keyboard compositions. Eight Coffin Nails, their last and fittingly eighth record, acts of their last hurrah, and sees the Jyvaskyla natives say goodbye in a suitably powerful and grandiose fashion. Featuring nine excellent tracks, and featuring Henri Sorvali of MOONSORROW and FINNTROLL fame, it’s a great way to bid farewell to their fans.

The album’s opener, Self-Exiled, doesn’t pull any punches, and starts incredibly strongly. It’s got great sounding, thick guitars, a beefy bass tone and impressive drumming all providing plenty of great moments throughout this track, with the acidic howl of the vocals soaring over the top of it all and grabbing your attention immediately. It’s got a decent amount of rawness to its sound, but manages to not overdo it, allowing everything to stand out as opposed to blending together. It’s an incredibly good way to start this album, and sets the bar high right out of the gate.

Facing the North is a solid piece of razor sharp, atmosphere-laden black metal, combining tight, melodic rhythm sections with a raw yet powerful production. This is an epic song in every sense of the word, providing a lot of impressive guitar hooks and suitably bleak vocals in amongst some minimalist yet memorable keyboard pieces. Aureate Waters blends powerful, mid-tempo rhythms and sharp, visceral lead guitars with equally ominous and hellish sounding vocals to great affect. It’s a very bleak and dark sounding track, undercut with an intensity and aggressive edge that makes it extremely compelling. In amongst the solid black metal hooks, there’s plenty of small keyboard pieces that help to give this a much larger and ultimately monolithic sound that sticks with you from the first listen.

The Upright Road is a fast and fierce piece of music, characterised by blistering guitars and machine gun precise drumming from Moonthorn. It’s musically very tight, interspersed with piercing melodies and powerful, ferocious vocals, and has a very vicious and oppressive sound to it. It’s an amazing sounding piece of black metal, and it proves to be one of the albums stand out tracks. Its final motif leads seamlessly into the track that follows, At Their Table; much like the track that preceded it, it’s an impressive display of black metal riffing, expert drum work and sharp, shrill vocals that does a great job of creating a traditional black metal sound, peppered with brilliant symphonic hooks courtesy of Henri Sorvali‘s keyboard compositions, which adds plenty of atmosphere to this track without completely taking over and shoving the rest of the instrumentation down in the mix.

The Foe of Many Masks is a really solid, mid-paced and grandiose affair. The keyboards sections give this track a monolithic sound, and coupling them with the dark and precise guitar lines, it gives this a very sombre and bleak feel. The vocals sound excellent, and really come to the front of the mix and help carry the song at various points. As the track progresses, it gathers momentum and the sound becomes much more varied, with cleaner guitar tones adding a lot of ambience to the mix.

Twice Eleven takes the atmospheric elements on this album up to a new level. The guitars are practically hypnotic, with the drums locking into the measured approach of the bulk of this song. The vocals are given an opportunity to really come to the fore, standing out from the vast majority of the track. As it progresses, much cleaner guitar tones are utilised, which helps to break this one up and broaden the scope of what’s on offer. The end of this track slides into the opener for the one after it, Pohjoinen. This is a great piece of instrumental music that layers on the ambient elements and lets the guitars and drums to take a backseat somewhat, allowing the keyboard sections to take prominence and carry the song.

It proves to be an excellent bridge between Twice Eleven and the album’s final song, To Flames the Flesh, by far and away the album’s longest offering, ties the whole record up brilliantly. This is a thoroughly mid-tempo offering, providing some aspects of atmosphere throughout. The guitars and drums slide into synch and give the listener a much more captivating experience, without straying into the realms of background noise. The vocals, once again, get a chance to take centre stage, and soar over the music, adding a sharp and jarring edge to a song that has a lot of measured, gloomy elements to it, which slowly dissolve into a much more minimalist effort as the song progresses. It literally ebbs away into nothingness, without any pomp, ceremony or grandiosity. It’s a very surprising way to bring this album, and indeed the ALGHAZANTH‘s recording career, to a close.

It can’t be understated just how good this record is. The music itself is fantastic from start to finish, incorporating various styles, speeds and tones, and their sound has benefited greatly from this album’s excellent production; it’s got an undeniably raw edge, without this aspect getting in the way of the sound or making it hard to listen to. As far as swansongs go, this ranks highly, and sticks indelibly into the listeners head straight away. This is, above everything else, a fittingly grandiose epitaph to a brilliant recording career from ALGHAZANTH.

Rating: 9/10

Eight Coffin Nails is out now via Woodcut Records.