Review Summary: Emo+grind=greatness
A Fine Boat, That Coffin!s music is kinda hard to explain. I mean, the soft parts epitomize emo, but the chaotic parts are a little harder to place. While the vocals are still typical emo, the instruments would definitely fit perfect on a grind album, which makes this band hard to
pinpoint to one specific genre. Either way, traditional emo and ridiculous grindcore combine to create a truly chaotic album in “The Second Nail”.
As obvious by the track names, the band comes from Germany. No surprise, the lyrics are pretty much never discernable, except in the samples. The first track on the album, Spritze, is a tremendous track with a catchy, yet technical, hook and an almost circus-y softer section. The track is short, but so are all the others. Every track, for the most part, has a softer, calm section and an intense, complex section. The tracks flow well between each other and there is always a break in the chaos well before it becomes tiresome, so the album isn’t terribly hard to listen to for the typical emo fan. More casual music listeners, however, probably won’t find this album very appealing.
The vocals remind me a ton of La Quiete. The spoken word parts are extremely passionate. The singer’s voice cracks, gives out, and fluctuates continuously throughout the albums. The screams are typical of the genre, but don’t really change dynamics or pitch very often. While the spoken parts are very diverse and unique, the screams are pretty much just screams. The guitars on this album are pretty technical at times, and create walls of sound over every track. The guitar parts are pretty dissonant, but during the softer sections the clean guitars sound fantastic. One thing I love about this album is how the guitars, while loud, never cover up the bass too much. The bass has plenty of times to shine and sounds great. The drums fit perfectly with everything, but during the chaotic sections it’s mostly blast beast.
The album itself is very good, but it’s not very diverse. The songs are all pretty similar and the screaming vocals don’t have too much variation. The spoken vocals are fantastic, the guitars are great, the bass is magnificent, and the drums are magnificent, but the songs themselves don’t do much to differentiate themselves from the other songs or from songs put out by other great emo acts like Sed Non Satiata and La Quiete. The album is extremely good, but after multiple listens the majesty of it wears off and, at the end of all, it’s just a very good emo album. If you like emo, get it. If you like grind, get it. If you like neither definitely give it a listen before you rush out to buy it.
