Take dark garage punk played with passion, add in a twisted sense of humour and a mad-man for a lead singer and you have LTW’s New Artist of the Day,The Coffins!
Bursting out of Glasgow’s underworld, The Coffins are a breath of fetid air in a world of X-Factor pseudo-niceness.
Riding a Cramps/Gun Club/Meteors kinda wave, they play the type of music that will have you grinning from ear to ear whilst planning to murder your in-laws.
Joe Bone leads the band and the diminutive vocalist attacks the mic with a gusto and energy that positively screams “goodtime” at you. That’s, of course, if your version of a good time involves songs about 60’s serial killers, drugs, celebrating alcoholism, blackmail and general mayhem.
Opening earlier this week for the James/Scabies Damned Damned Damned show in Glasgow, The Coffins wreaked havoc on the audience and quite frankly, blew the headliners away. With a rhythm section of Graham Platt and Michael Werninck on drums and bass respectively, The Coffins are a tightly-drilled garage rock machine. Add in Bill Gilchrist’s metal-tinged guitar and Bone’s bluesy, gravelly, shrieks and yelps and you have a mixture that’s hard to ignore.
‘Bible John’ is about the notorious (and as yet, still not apprehended) 60’s Glasgow serial murderer who preyed on women in the legendary Barrowland Ballroom. It’s a sleazy, greasy rocker with sinister backing vocals from the band and evokes Alex Harvey’s mental-er moments. “You dancin’…? I’m askin’,” stutters Bone in the songs coda. Unsettling in the extreme.
‘Boy Band Member’ has a staggered Who-style chord progression with spiraling lead from Gilchrist and a vocal line in which Bone urges, “Bring me the head, of a boy band member.” Hard to argue with that, really.
It’s refreshing to hear a band these days with so little pretension and pre-planned agenda. The Coffins are a straight-down-the-white-line punk-rockin’, garage-stompin’, arse-kicking rock and roll band. The songs are fast, furious and darkly humorous courtesy of Bone’s deranged mind.
Looking for something to blow away the Xmas cobwebs? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ghouls, I give you The Coffins.
The Coffins forthcoming album is called ‘Bob’s Shed’ and it will be out in January. You can hear what you will be in for on their Soundcloud page. Be sure to check out their Facebook page as well.
Words by Joe Whyte. More writing by Joe on Louder Than War can be found here.
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