Coffin Salesman – “The Birth Of Flies”
The music suggests a funeral dirge, with pallbearers bearing a casket on their shoulders while umbrellas are held over crying mourners in a steady, constant rain and grim, cemetery attendants are standing by in the lurch.
“The leaves are dying on the trees. The fruit is rotting on the vine. The songbirds have fallen and we are turning.”
The guitar chimes monochromatically along, cascading placidly while full gushes of sound emanate like a gust of arid, dry wind spiraling off into a desert or the void.
This is “Transformation (I)”, and it sounds almost like an alluring invitation to a death chamber.
“Alexandra’s Wings” is a spoken word piece accompanied with jarring dissonant notes and some sound scaping screams placed upon it along with a gentle, piano adorning it, gracefully.
“Alexandra’s growing wings. Soon they will be strong enough to lift her heavenward.” This song draws you in though, you also feel you want to move away. “Away from the cruel world where each dirty look conveys the unsaid.”
The music moves intensely, ominously along like an unpleasant conversation you wish would be interrupted.
“She flaps around the room, but it never feels like ascension. Says, “God please intercede, if I have your attention”. And she recalls an old Sunday School lesson about the leap of faith. One step is all it takes.”
There’s a tone of dread and disturbance in every second of this song that instead of repelling you, actually seduces you into its compelling web.
“Transformation (II)” plays out like a soundtrack song of a Spaghetti Western flick from the sixties, without the dramatic flash, while still suggesting the majestic surrealness and other world-like feeling of that genre. You can imagine dusty hooves of horses treading along desert lands where death is always a possibility with each step you take, every way you turn.
“The Birth Of Flies” begins with some minimal, repetitive piano and slicing, cello like sounds before the narrative springs out suggesting a patient dying in a hospital, or an assassination about to happen. Whatever it is, it appears to be about someone’s final day.
He drinks his over-sweetened coffee, smokes his last cigarettes and awaits the inevitable.
“As the skin of his stomach is pulled back, he gives up the ghost. There is clicking and buzzing in the air. You finally break through the skin. There’s a little bit of God in all of us.”
And then a pleasant, melodic piano backing a crooning, falsetto vocal arrives- “And it’s gonna take you. It’s gonna transform you. Until no one will recognize. What you learn will distort your eyes. You ignored all the signs. This hole was made just for you.”
This song ends with some droning, atmospheric sounds. This song is the audio equivalent of a Dada film. This song, this release sounds like a collaboration between David Lynch and William Burroughs.
“Every Worm Will Turn,” starts with the words- “The cat chases the tail. The snake loses its scales. The traveler loses the trail. And the train goes right off the rails.” Some more great lines as another great song creeps creepily up my spine in eerie, goth-like glory.
“The paint covers the rat. The drink covers the thought. All the keys break off into the lock. And the temperature is starting to drop. And there’s a joke that everyone knows. Got to heaven and the curtain was closed. God made your soul for someone to take. It’s tied to a string that’s starting to break. Every worm will turn.”
The mood is stark and somber, like a prisoner being led to the death gallows. And conjures up in sound as if you were reading an Edgar Allen Poe short story.
The final song “May All The Mirrors Break,” suggests two Velvet Underground tunes to me- “All Tomorrow Parties” mixed with “Venus In Furs” while sounding like neither. Some dour, downtrodden music leads to a distorted spoken word part.
This song could be called a folk/goth madrigal but that doesn’t sound nearly as dark and dire as this song sounds to me.
This release knocked me for a loop, took my breath away, like I was doubled over by an unexpected blow to my gut. It made me think of “Berlin” by Lou Reed- though, it really doesn’t sound like that. It made me think of “Closer” by Joy Division- though, it really doesn’t sound like that either.
I consider it great just for the fact of making me think of two of my favorite albums.
I do think this release contains wonderful ruminations about death.
And I do think it’s highly ambitious, wonderfully creative and truly original without being one bit pretentious or obscure.
One of the best releases I’ve heard this year, it’s like I died and gone…Well, I just can’t say where.
May you all rest in peace.
Someday.
(Slimedog)
