SPOTLIGHT: Coffin Shares Their New Album

It’s been more than a year and a half since beloved local bands have fueled fervent mosh pits within the sweaty, chaotic living rooms around San Luis Obispo. Music enthusiasts have long-awaited the return of live music — at last, musicians are returning to the stages (and house venues) of SLO.

Residents of the one and only Jeffrey House — a popular DIY venue for local acts — welcomed the locally-legendary garage band Coffin to premiere their brand new album, Altered Season. As they moved couches and tables from inside to the backyard, a stage was eventually born — what was once a living room quickly became a raging sea of people and sweat.

Deafening drums and feral guitar were welcomed by a monstrous crowd looking to mosh. As the ceaseless tumult of swinging elbows and college student angst bounced from wall to wall, Coffin played the entirety of Altered Season. Heavy metal riffs from the track “River” hypnotically encouraged headbanging; hardcore punk track “Animated Spasm” ignited a sweltering, vigorous pit.

Live from the living room at Jeffrey. Photos by Renee Kao.

Front-to-back, this album is heavy. It’s one of the loudest, most abrasive records to come from any local group in years. Influences of heavy metal, punk, and even post-punk are all over Altered Season — it’s 33 minutes of pure adrenaline and rage.

While closing track “Animated Spasm” is a quick, three-minute flurry of grimy punk, more metal-esque tracks like “Death Dealer” and “River” both break nearly ten minutes in length; this record has a little bit of everything for enthusiasts of heavy music. Listen to the album on Spotify.

We were fortunate enough to enjoy the album live. The dedicated local community of musicians and fans have actively sustained the tradition of hosting house shows from year to year. Noah Boland, bassist of Coffin, lived in the Jeffrey House just a few years ago — he passed the house down to a group of undergraduates in hopes that these successors would offer its living room as a stage for local musicians. Sure enough, Noah and the band were welcomed just a few years later to return for a live performance of their newest album.

We spoke with Noah about the show.

“We wanted to do our album release show in SLO,” he explained, “but unfortunately, all the venues and DIY spaces we hit up to throw a show didn’t seem interested, which was weird considering we’re coming off of a whole year of no live music. So we decided to hit up the new guys at Jeffrey. They drove from way out of town to put this on, opened up their house to like 160 people, and threw an awesome show. These people are selfless leaders in the music community and they’re the reason the SLO music scene is cool and special.”

It was certainly an album release party to remember — the night truly felt like a celebration of both the album and of the return of live music. Listen to Coffin’s newest album Altered Season on Spotify.

Robbie Baker is wav’s Content Director. He wrote the article. Renee Kao is one of wav’s General Managers. She took the photos at the show. Jo Anna Edmisson is wav’s Media Director. She took the article photo.