Album Review: Swamp Coffin – Drowning Glory (APF Records)

Purveyors of all things heavy, sludgy, and miserably intense, Swamp Coffin are back with their brand-new album, ‘Drowning Glory’, out September 27th, 2024, via APF Records.

Going from strength to strength as they use this album to close the door on trauma and grief that have surrounded this band since its inception, Swamp Coffin’s return is a heavy one. A really heavy one, in fact. The band providing all the miserable sludge sounds listeners have come to expect, but expanding on the chaos with elements of blackened hardcore. It might be familiar thick savagery from Swamp Coffin, but everything has been turned up an extra notch. Resulting in some most head-busting heavy sounds of 2024.

With no wasted seconds, this album explodes into life with the gurn-inducing Know You’re Worthless. It’s a such a hit of adrenaline as the instruments crash together with so much force and the vocals tear chunks out of the brain matter. This is the sludgy muck we’re all here to bathe in, and even though it is thick enough to choke, there’s no denying its immeasurable appeal.

Something that applies to the album as a whole, appealing ferocity, which hits an apex with This Was Always Going to End in War. Just when you thought Swamp Coffin couldn’t sound any more savage, deliver any more encouragement to be violent, and brutalise the senses to the point of pain, they arrive with this beast of a track. The senseless intensity is fantastic, and within the first two tracks, Swamp Coffin have already managed to wreck bodies, minds, and souls.

Whereas that track is where this band ‘experiment’ with their heavy sound, the title track and Hypocritical Mass are focused nastiness based almost entirely in the sound of raw filth. The expulsion of feeling that comes from both these tracks is gobsmacking, but there’s also a showcase of musical depth too. This isn’t just noise for the sake of noise (mostly), there’s so much that hooks and Swamp Coffin always seem to know when it’s time to take their foot off the gas momentarily. They’re both excellent tracks, but the former has a guitar solo that is to die for, so just edges it.

This isn’t a one-track pony album in anyway though and to really appreciate the true power of Swamp Coffin’s creativity here, it should be heard as a full thing, Even if the likes of Chapter and Hearse’s slow pummelling is exceptionally painful. This beauty of a miserable beast is one of the most melodically charged efforts on the album, which just enhances the overt feeling of despondency that it has. It’s going to sound a bit ‘broken record’ but, f**k it, this is another slice of utter brilliance.

There’s no time to clean the palette though as Swamp Coffin force even more thick and gloopy liquid down the throat with the no-nonsense sludge assault that is Terminally Cursed. No amount of lethargy to the instruments can diminish the relentless ruthlessness of this track, especially when the vocals roar with throat-tearing viciousness.

The three-piece are on the form of their lives here, and this is going to go down as one hell of a moment for Swamp Coffin and the sludge scene in general. Rarely do you find an album that is this intense be this exceptional. You might be expecting a lull, a moment that doesn’t hit quite as hard as the others, a track that just passes by in unremarkable fashion, but it never comes. Right up to the end, an end that brings a disorientating amount of ugly noise to the surface, Swamp Coffin pushing the limits of musical decency to the edge in the most enjoyable way possible.

Not just delivering one of the heaviest records of the year, Swamp Coffin have stepped up in every department here and delivered a record of the year contender. This is the sound of a band digging deeper than ever, a band reaching an even more confident level, and having developed as artists to the point where their creativity can be fully realised. Do not miss out on hearing this, it’s the kind of misery everyone will enjoy wallowing in.

Swamp Coffin – Drowning Glory Track Listing:

1. Know You’re Worthless
2. This Was Always Going to End in War
3. Drowning Glory
4. Hypocritical Mass
5. Chapter And Hearse
6. Terminally Cursed
7. As Cold as Blood

Links

LinkTree | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | APF Records