One Last Final Action

It was the philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, who said poetry is a “darkening of being”. The poetical and general aesthetical is to be found everywhere and it is important to remember that these days art is not so much visible anymore – there is no direct message that is communicated, rather it relies much more on subjective expression, abstract concepts, the ontological question concerning alternative realities etc. This is precisely what I picked up while listening to this album.

From the very first note, you can hear, feel and sense the “darkening of being”. It is very intensive from the start right through to the end. The vocals are very haunting and there is a general minimalist approach with this album – the band does not rely very strongly on the thundering of instruments. In contrast to most other modern day metal bands, the drums are quite soft and gentle. The bass is very prominent, while the guitar is a bit more on the background, yet still clearly present. This band actually proves that you can do a lot with very little. They are not trying to manipulate the listener with loudness and all sorts of bombastic concepts. Rather, they place their full emphasis and focus on emotion, which is precisely what music is supposed to be – something that addresses the emotional states of the human being.

Instead of seeing it as an album with individual tracks, this album is rather a coherent force that takes the listener on one hell of an emotional journey. The way in which every track starts is also very gripping, since the music has a dark aura that complements the horrific and painful screams of the vocalist. I think the feature of this album that I appreciate the most, is the honesty. This band does not want to conform to a specific cluster where they are polishing their egos. Rather, they want to dwell within the honest expression of emotion and stream of consciousness.

It is almost as if the vocalist is emptying himself of every drop of blood. He reincarnates as a being whose heart is pumping raw, black streams of suicide and depression. The speakers or the headphones over which you are listening transforms into the jaws of the abyss – spewing and vomiting an odyssey of unimaginable pain.

It is also as if the sound in general has a symbolic value concerning the distanced distortion – just as the muffled distortion is an anomaly which feels cold and distant, so the emotional plains of despair is a cold and distant dimension where the only solution is suicide.

This is indeed a masterpiece!

Throughout my life, especially in my early teens, I dealt with truckloads of depression and suicidal thoughts. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has struggled with it before, considering the deaths I’ve had to deal with throughout my life thus far. In the end of it all, after I’ve grown up and realize that the life I was given is beyond decent and not as shitty as I once thought, some things still make me want to bury myself alive six feet under. It’s not even that I want to blow my brains out or hang myself from a skyscraper, I just want to live in a coffin, that simple. I’m In A Coffin is a black metal outfit that grabbed my attention after a friend recommended them to me. Coming from parts unknown in the United States, a silly band name and some of the most unoriginal track titles that I’ve seen in a long time, I’m In A Coffin is less of a joke and more of a realization that depressive/suicidal black metal lives with the heart of an iron giant.

So, what do you get when you listen to I’m In A Coffin’s debut full-length that was released back in 2008? You actually get the feeling that you’ve set up shop inside of a fucking coffin. “One Final Action” is such a very powerful record that can alter the bright mood you might be in or it can assist you in helping others commit suicide in various ways. The down-tempo, nineteen-eighties gloom from the tomb riffs that “Adorable”, (yes, the person goes by that name), produces are the same I would expect to find while I was stalking a graveyard for my next victim. As haunting and creepy as the guitar is, the bass is what sets everything up in perfect alignment. It’s the “icing on the cake” if you will when it comes to instrumental work on “One Final Action”.

“Sad-ist”, the vocalist/bassist for this roller-coaster of an outfit, delivers chords that soar over everything else on this record and some vocal work that will creep you the fuck out. His vocals aren’t your average black metal style, they have more of this feeling that “Sad-ist” is being choked as he screams the lyrics, even sometimes whimpering it sounds like. While he swims in his own self-loathing and depression, you also get the feeling that something is missing from his heart. Concerned for his missing counterpart, “Sad-ist” opens up his chest for you to diagnose what is wrong with him in his lyrics.

"My continued existence is worse than death, Yet I still live on. Trying to force apathy upon myself. To replace my depression with numbness. I tell myself that it’s worked…That I don’t feel anything anymore…But deep down, I know that I’ll never. Be anything resembling “positive”. Life is my coffin and it’s time to shut the lid. One final action, And this will all end…One final action and this will all end…One final action…I can’t fight the inevitable…So I embrace it…Embrace suicide…I want to die alone and cold, and hating myself for every moment of hope that I ever had."

So, as the great Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once said:

"Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me."

Forget everything you’ve known and everything you will learn, just know that I’m In A Coffin is something very real, something worth a long, hard stare and something that will make you think twice about depressive/suicidal black metal. Oh, remember, if you need me, I’ll be buried someone in Van Buren, Arkansas, living inside of a coffin.

Originally written for: http://bloodorlove.domesticgenocide.com/

If you ever take the time to look at your life, and you believe that your thoughts provoke melancholy or dejection, then One Final Action just might be the audible form of Depression. The DSBM scene these days is according to some people, "degenerating" or becoming the new Deathcore. If this is true then I hope new DSBM sounds like I'm In a Coffin, because you just might be hearing the future of black metal.

For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to listen to that appalling demo "Buried Alive" Most of you would probably not even want to ever hear IIAC 's name again, I didn't for a while. Everything about Buried Alive in my opinion sounded terrible, especially So Numb, So dead; It was depressing in the way that I knew if I listened to it any longer I'd probably kill myself from how atrocious it sounds.

If you're lenient towards IIAC however, then you might just listen to one of the greatest DSBM album ever. You will first notice IIAC has a knack in adding samples to the beginning of tracks, while it might at first be a turn off, it quickly becomes clear that the samples perfectly harmonize with the music. Another Thing you will notice is the very powerful bass guitar. It almost drowns out the fuzzy guitar that usually just floats along with the bass playing simple chords, although there are a few guitar solos believe it or not. Speaking off bass this One Final Action almost completely lacks any bass drumming, thanks to the Drum machine. The drumming itself is very simple and stripped down. It usually plays simple 4X4 rhythms, but it is strangely suiting to the album.

The one thing that stands out in my mind is definitely the vocals. I have never heard anything like it. It does not sound like a guy in some Scandinavian forest. It does not sound like a Malefic style "echo from death," and it certainly does not sound like emo Morbid from Happy Days. Imagine more like Silencer, minus the old lady sound to the voice and substitute it with pure anguish. Even if in reality IIAC is a total joke band, they still give off an eerie effect of gloominess that in my opinion, Trist is the only comparable band

I would talk about each song word by word, but I want whoever is reading this to download, or better yet buy the album. I think there is still a few left on Ebay somewhere. This is easily one of my most cherished albums, and I recommend this album to any fan of music, for this is as close to perfection as it gets.

"Once A Man Realizes How Futile Life Truly Is, Depression Is The Only Reality He Knows For Depression Is The Only True Reality"

I'm In A Coffin should, no, *deserve* to be crowned The Kings of Depressive/Suicidal Black Metal. Their music has the power to actually physically unsettle people, to genuinely affect the mood of the listener. If you were already feeling a little bit glum, putting this album on play might just cause you to degenerate into a sobbing, self-loathing wreck. The sheer level of emotion and apparent insanity injected into every track on this album, cannot even be found within the works of the heavy-hitters of the DSBM scene, such as Lifelover, Happy Days, Thy Light or Silencer.


IIAC's particular blend of down-tempo, drop-b guitars, slow and tortured drumming, seemingly perfected by the issue of their first demo, Buried Alive, are found to be almost exactly the same upon this release, but don't get me wrong, that is certainly not a bad thing. However, IIAC's key feature is the vocals.


NOTHING I have ever heard manages to evoke such a range of negative emotion as Sad-ist's voice. Ranging from genuinely disturbed sounding clean vocals, to primal screams that sound like a human being who is genuinely in pain baring his soul on record, to the eerie and haunting, and sometimes even sickly melodic delivery of certain lines which make the entire album worth listening to.


Just to re-cap, to add emphasis, the vocals alone make the *entire* album worth a listen. Factor in the beautifully arranged (in a sad way) guitars, the constant atmosphere of hatred and despair, and you have a recipe for what I already beleive to be album of the year. The only reason it doesnt deserve 100 is because, unfortunately, it had to end.