Album Type:
Full-length
Date Released:
27/10/2014
Label:
Translation Loss Records
‘Coffin
Wisdom’ CD//DD track listing:
01. Damaged
Awake
02. Coffin
Wisdom
03. Dark
Matter
04. You
Deserve This
05. Haunted
06. Stolen
Voices
07. Crawling
on the Ceiling
Generation
of Vipers is:
Joshua Holt | Guitar,
Vocals, Percussion
Travis
Kammeyer | Bass
B.J. Graves | Drums,
Percussion
Review:
Earlier this year I wrote a review for Trap Them
regarding their latest album ‘Blissfucker’ in which I recommended that in order
to set themselves apart from all of the other d-beat influenced hardcore bands,
and in specific, those working in some Stockholm-style death metal influences
as well, they might want to focus instead on their more engaging, slower
material and make efforts toward finding a new trail separate from the one
they’ve already helped blaze. Well, now I’m not sure what the hell they need to
do because Generation Of Vipers is pretty damned close to what I had in mind.
There isn’t a thrash, blast or d-beat to be found anywhere on this album and it
works very strongly in their favor.
What Generation Of Vipers has done on ‘Coffin
Wisdom’, their fourth full-length album, is apparently something they’ve been
doing for some time now. I feel awful that I’ve only learned about this band
with this release as what they’re doing is something that feels new, even if it
does borrow from some well-known influences (Neurosis most notably). They
definitely still sound like a hardcore band at heart, but they also use enough
unique rhythms and guitar ideas that the lines are blurred, and rigid
genre tags are confounded in the process.
One of the areas where Generation of Vipers put so
many of their peers to shame is in the rhythm section. They feel like a single
unit more because the bass often takes its cues from the drums rather than the
guitar which it strangely not the case with the majority of metal bands. In an
interview with Metal Wani,
the reason Generation of Vipers is so strong from a groove standpoint is made
clear: they’ve all played drums in this band or another. Every one of them has
a strong background in rhythm and percussion.
That rhythm is their sharpest musical weapon is
self-evident, but to cite a specific example; all you need to do is listen to
the first minute or so of “Stolen Voices” to get the general idea. Bassist
Travis Kammeyer and drummer B.J. Graves are so tight they feel like a single
entity. While their unshakable groove stomps and decimates, guitarist/vocalist
Joshua Holt lets an octaved guitar melody float over the top of it, so as to
not get in the footpath of the beast. However, its separation is short-lived
and the guitar is quickly assimilated, like Captain Picard into The Borg.
All of this is to say that Generation of Vipers is
a band whose name should be on everyone’s lips, assuming you’re a fan of post
metal/hardcore/sludge and so on. We’re at a point in heavy metal history where
it’s becoming harder and harder to find bands that aren’t easily pigeonholed or
labeled as a nostalgia act. Orthodox bands and bands writing love letters to
the past have an important role to play; acting as a sort of comfort food for
our ears. But, and this is stating the obvious, bands that push things forward,
either through genuinely original ideas or through coming up with interesting
new style concoctions, are even more vital to heavy music’s continued strength
and virility. I’d certainly count Generation of Vipers as being a part of the
second group rather than the first, which is nice to be able to say about a
band in this genre when you consider that even “post” metal is starting to
suffer from a lack of innovation.
Words by:
Daniel Jackson
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