Coffin Storm Summons Pure Metallic Delight on "Arcana Rising" (Review + Interview)

It’s well known that Marlon Brando was an asshole on set who hid in his trailer, refused to learn his lines, and attempted to sabotage films with suggestions like having his character be a voice-acted bagel rather than a human. Behavior such as this implied that he didn’t enjoy acting when not on his terms, which stings because there’s an underlying assumption that any artist, actor, musician, or otherwise, loves their medium, because why the hell would they be making art when they could find a job with sustainable income? There’s also a spark of joy that comes from a musician openly admitting they love music and indulging in it. It’s the same type of joy as when your partner of a decade-plus winks at you or when Henry Cavill derails an interview to mention how a particular setpiece looks like a Black Stone Fortress. It’s unabashed, open, and pure. 

Coffin Storm is a collaborative project between Apollyon (Aura Noir), Bestial Tormentor (Infernö), and Fenriz (Darkthrone) that embodies this passion and sparks this joy. Their debut album Arcana Rising, which came out last week, relishes in their adolescent love for metal. Bestial Tormentor and Apollyon actually played in the doom metal band Lamented Souls together when they were teens during the 1990s, but the outfit never released more than a few demos and a compilation. 

Their friendship is rooted in metal and it permeates Arcana Rising, which is unpretentious and laser-focused on making heavy metal while taking inspiration only from heavy metal and for the purpose of creating heavy metal. This mindset is evident in all aspects, from the songwriting (which evolved out of jam sessions between Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor during COVID) to the musicianship. The latter supposedly takes hints from doom metal and thrash metal, but in all honesty, Arcana Rising is strictly heavy metal, with the whimsy, performativism, and balls that metal requires. 

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This is all to say that it sounds nothing like recent Darkthrone or Aura Noir. Bestial Tormentor’s riffs steer the tracks, charioting “Over Frozen Moors” and “Eighty-Five and Seven Miles,” the latter of which could’ve been a thrash track if Coffin Storm weren’t so plodding. This pace, though, is integral to the record. It’s as if Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor have pledged their allegiance to their riffs and will follow them to their grave. They derive the most usefulness from the least amount of resources. Instead of urgency, there’s confidence; they let riffs or song sections continue onwards and ride their strength for as long as it can sustain. 

The riffs are muscular and fun for no other reason than that’s how Arcana Rising was conceived: as a way for Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor to connect during the pandemic. It’s music for music’s sake and the end product reflects its origins. Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor are so in tune with one another from just jamming together that Arcana Rising barely breaks a sweat. 

Fenriz is the real laborer here, and his quasi-improvised performance can be a labor of love for the listener at times. It’s clear which tracks he heard beforehand and which he heard for the first time while he was recording his vocals. His approach was inspired by Johan Längqvist’s performance on Candlemass’ Epicus Doomicus Metalicus, and as such, his delivery is loose, unrefined, and most crucially, charming. His opening lines on “Over Frozen Moors” will divide listeners because you can hear him finding his groove. For some, it’ll sound like he’s just quirky Fenriz, but once the chorus comes around on the title track, his character becomes undeniable. He counterbalances the synergy between Apollyon and Bestial Tormentor with an unpredictable attempt at operatic vocals. He’s the spark that cements Arcana Rising as undistilled heavy metal that only wants to be heavy metal, with all its bravado and endearing or off-putting over-the-topness.

Apollyon spoke to us about the album’s backstory, recording vocals, and the band’s ties to their hometown of Kolbotn, among other topics.

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Arcana Rising is surprisingly fun for a metal album like this. Were you pursuing a fun feeling with it?

A few people have said that it sounds fun. Really though, we didn’t have any great plans or anything when we started rehearsing together. The main focus was playing guitar together once a week and making whatever came out. We had been making doom metal together for a while, we were in Lamented Souls, our first band together. So I expected it to turn out more doomy than it did. The title track is actually an old song from our band that we never released. I think we played it with the other guys but it didn’t sound the way we wanted it to and we wanted to try Fenriz’s vocals on it. And it worked out really well. 

How did it feel to revisit it years after writing it for Lamented Souls?

The midsection is not quite like it was 20 years ago or whenever we wrote it. We never got it to where we wanted, like we never got the groove on the vocal line. Nothing felt right when we played it last time. So it felt much better now. We played it just for fun before our recording session because, really, we didn’t want to use any Lamented Souls material, but the test recording sounded okay so we decided to lay more guitars on it and we got Fneriz to sing on it. It felt great but I think it's the only pure doom metal song on the album. 

The other songs come from an 80s place where it’s little bits of heavy, doom, and thrash, but without going too far in any one direction, it seems. 

That’s about right. I think it’s because the other guy made most of the riffs while I sat behind the drums, which I often do because I can play them, slightly. He was very productive, so he spewed out riffs. Because I was stuck behind the drums, I told him that I was going to make one long-ass song, which ended up being “Open the Gallows” and over 10 minutes long. That’s entirely mine. 

That’s my favorite song, actually. What made you want to make that sort of song once you got behind the drums?

I’ve been in that same situation with my other band Aura Noir where I’m placed behind the drums, and even if I have loads of riffs, the other guys are so productive that I don’t feel that I’ve contributed a whole lot. My initial plan was to have a Metallica-like instrumental, like “Orion” or another from one of their first albums. But then, I wanted to have vocals after all because I realized it would have meant loads and loads of guitar parts and stuff. I knew Aureal, he’s a generation younger, also from Kolbotn. I sent him the song and he put a beautiful solo on it. Just great. And also, Fenriz’s singing did the trick. I did sing it myself on the double bass drum part, but I think I took my vocals away just before I sent it to mastering. I was ashamed because everything else was so good that I didn’t want to spoil the whole thing (laughs).

You’re being too harsh on yourself. But I wanted to chat about how your original vocals would’ve differed from Fenriz’s since you originally assumed you would’ve performed vocals until you were able to get him. 

It would’ve been different with me singing. I’m not used to singing clear vocals like he does. I think I do some backing vocals on there and I can hide behind his vocals and that’s okay, but I don’t feel very confident singing that cleanly myself. So, I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever tried it, so who knows? But, his vocal lines are also amazing because some of the riffs change tones in a weird way, so you can’t really keep a note because ten seconds after, it’ll turn sour or off-key. So, I think Fenriz did a great job with all of it. 

He did the first session quickly because he had this idea that the vocalist behind Candlemass on Epicus Doomicus Metalicus, I don’t think he heard the songs before he recorded them, so Fenriz didn’t want to hear the songs. Nobody had made lyrics, so he was in for a surprise. He told all the neighbors that it would be noisy for five hours that day. In that time, he ran back and forth to the toilet and played sections of the song, he made vocal lines and wrote lyrics for three songs, including “Over Frozen Moors.” 

For the last four songs, I was allowed to send him the tracks a week or two before. 

So it’s on the first three songs that feature his “improvised’ performance?

“Over Frozen Moors,” “Eighty-Five and Seven Miles,” and “Clockwork Cult.” Those three are from the first session. 

You can tell they’re the loosest out of them all. What does “Eighty-Five and Seven Miles” mean?

Ehhhh, I never asked about the lyrics. I kinda know what he’s singing because I heard the song a billion times while mixing it, but I have no idea for sure. Maybe they’re just words that fit the music, who knows? As long as it's the right words, I don't really care, and he doesn't like explaining what the songs are about, as far as I know. 

Earlier, you said you guys didn’t want to go back to old Lamented Soul songs. Was it because it’d been so long since you performed them?

Mainly, it was to not upset the other two Lamented Souls members. This was during COVID or whatever, plus, the older you get, the harder it is to gather four grown men once a week. We just wanted to play once a week, so we said let’s not make it Lamened Souls because otherwise it’d end up as nothing at all. We wanted to make it something new. But we still got the blessing from Einard, the drummer from Lamented Souls, to do the one Lamented Souls song. Either way, Bestial Tormentor and I have always made every single riff for that band, so it’s our stuff. 

You said before, when speaking of Aura Noir, that “personally, I like Aura Noir to sound pretty dry and organic. Like the music we grew up listening to.” Was that same idea present in Arcana Rising?

Did I say dry? It doesn't have to be dry, but definitely organic. I like music that stands out even if it's not perfectly played. At least it doesn’t sound like everything else. I like it to have some character. At least with this album, I thought we were going to record it in some professional studio. I’d only put four microphones on the drum kits in the rehearsal space. But the other guys liked that sound, so if I had to do it all over, it was hard to get the drums to sound right because it was noisy in the small room. But, I mean, we have lots of overdubs on the guitars and leads. I even managed to get Fenriz to sing multiple takes from the same songs, which I don’t think he’s ever done before. I was able to pick and choose and layer the vocals on top of each other. 

It sounds, to me, like a scrappy first album. It sounds like what I thought heavy metal was when I was a kid. Even though you have all the overdubs, it still sounds like a smaller band coming from the underground. 

I wanted it to sound more raw than anything else. I wouldn’t mind if it sounded like Master of Puppets, but I don’t know how to do that. 

You handled production as well, right?

Yeah, in a way, but I haven’t done much of that in this computer world. I don’t do it often, so every time I log on I have to waste half an evening waiting for everything to update and then the creative juices are gone. There is a lot I don't know, so I went for the most organic stuff I could find and the least plugins I could find.

I enjoy producing, but the computer system is too much. It’s like choosing a Netflix movie. Some days you need a delay, so you spend all night scrolling through delays, but you end up not using any of them, just like how you can kill a whole evening scrolling through Netflix without watching anything. I do enjoy the studio part. 

Would you like to get more involved with the studio part as your career progresses?

I’d like to, but at the moment, I don’t really have time. It was my plan initially. I went to a school to learn the basics. I know where I want to go with the sound but I don’t know the basics. However, that was 10 years ago, and I haven’t done much with it since then. 

If you could, would you want a cleaner, more polished sound?

No, I think the sound is fine. I want to have a raw sound, but the next album could sound different. Definitely not the modern click-tracking copy-and-paste, though. It has to sound alive. Most of my favorite albums are raw, but then again, you have Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets. Even the first Candlemass is well produced. 

Since Coffin Storm is your first new project since Aura Noir, does it feel like a new beginning?

Not yet, but it feels good to have an album that’s not that extreme but is still heavy. It’s also nice to have an album out because we never got to record anything serious with Lamented Souls. We just had one failed attempt at an album that was later released. I'm pretty happy with this and it’s cool to be with the guys from my hometown. But, a new beginning? It’s a new beginning with Bestial Tormentor, because I’ve always wanted to play with him, and it’s been a dream of mine to be in a band with Fenriz since I saw him at the local cinema in 89. 

You two go way back then. 

Yeah, but he’s two or three years older than me, and that’s a lot when you’re 13. Plus, we went to different high schools. There are three in high school but all three of us went to different high schools. I first met Bestial Tormentor when I went to college but Fenriz didn’t go to that college. 

That’s crazy that you have so many local connections that have shaped black metal as a whole, and it’s so causal to you because it was just a few years of age that separated you two. Small-town vibes. 

Yeah, there are only 10,000 people in the area. I’d seen all the guys before college, including Darkthrone, but they were rockstars at the time, at least to me. 

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Arcana Rising is available now through Peaceville Records.