Coffins
Tokyo's longest-running death/doom outfit, grinding out low-end punishment since 1996 on a stack of splits thicker than most bands' entire discographies.
About
COFFINS have been dragging Tokyo through the mud since 1996, when multi-instrumentalist Bungo Uchino started the project with a simple mission: play slow, play heavy, play ugly. After a brief hiatus from 2000 to 2003, the band came back meaner, dropping their debut full-length Mortuary in Darkness on Razorback Recordings in 2005 and never letting up. Over two decades later they've stacked up six studio albums, well over twenty split releases with bands like Noothgrush, Ilsa, and Stormcrow, and a reputation as one of the most dependable live acts in the Japanese underground. The current lineup -- Uchino on guitar, Jun Tokita on vocals, Masafumi Atake on bass, and Satoshi Hikida on drums -- locked in around 2015 and has been the tightest iteration yet. Beyond the Circular Demise (2019) and Sinister Oath (2024) are both on Relapse Records, their third consecutive LP for the label. Every member holds down a day job -- Uchino produces comic scenarios, Tokita works a record shop counter, Hikida does installations, Atake runs a printing press -- and the band operates on a schedule that respects the grind of daily life in Tokyo. Live, COFFINS deliver exactly what the records promise: downtuned, cavernous death/doom that hits like a wrecking ball at 40 BPM. They've made the trek to Maryland Deathfest and done US runs, though Uchino is the first to admit the distance from Japan remains a massive barrier. No gimmicks, no reinvention -- just two-and-a-half decades of methodical, crushing heaviness that has earned them quiet reverence from death metal heads worldwide.