Shit Coffins Termination LP
This is a purely incredible record, made by some of the sharpest punks in the game. To put my love for it into context: When I was in high school, I discovered BORN/DEAD, which completely rocked my world and sort of shaped my taste in hardcore punk—catchy, rocking, versatile, political, with muddy guitar tone and barking vocals. If that band had continued, and got better and more experimental, you would have SHIT COFFINS. The guitar riffs are unrelenting, I heard a little TOTALITÄR in the D-beat parts, a little CHAOS UK in the mid-tempo punk parts, and maybe a little DROPDEAD in the hardcore parts. Nothing but pure chaos on the drums. The lyrics, sung with aggressive desperation, read like a book. They seem to center around carried pain, possibly trauma. “I close my eyes and it’s all I see / Presence is fear / consuming the past — fervency of now / This darkness will last.” The song “Benchmarks” has lyrics that I thought were actually pretty positive: “There is not hope beyond what you can hold / Life is loss / Hold onto hope no matter the cost.”