Coastlands prep Kurt Ballou-recorded LP, tap Glassing vocalist for new song (listen)
Portland heavy post-rockers Coastlands are releasing their new album Death on October 9 via Translation Loss, marking their first for the label (pre-order). “When we began dreaming up the concept for this record we decided we wanted to work with Kurt Ballou (God City Recording, Converge) fairly early on and were excited when we agreed to work with us,” said guitarist Jason Sissoyev, who started Coastlands as a solo ambient project before turning it into a full band in 2016.
“[Kurt] was always a dream engineer for all of us because of his work on records like Russian Circles, Converge, Oathbreaker, Chelsea Wolfe, and Baptists. He provided the exact imprint we had hoped to make this album sound larger than life. We asked Kurt who he recommended for mastering and he connected us with Magnus Lindberg (Cult of Luna) to lay down the final touches on this LP. It was the ultimate dream to work with him in terms of post-production. When we heard the final masters for the album we were speechless, the way both of these incredible icons opened our sound was unreal.”
We’re premiering the album’s second single “Dead Friends,” which is the band’s first song with vocals, and they come courtesy of Glassing‘s Dustin Coffman. Dustin’s passionate screams fit right in with Coastlands’ climactic music, and the result is something that sounds like a cross between Deafheaven, Russian Circles, and Cult of Luna. If you like any or all of those bands, you should definitely check this out too.
“‘Dead Friends’ was originally a B-Side from 2017 when we were writing our previous LP, The Further Still,” Jason says. “We struggled with finding the right direction for the song and decided to shelf it for a later revision. We revisited the song in 2019 and by that point our perspectives had changed, allowing us to see ‘Dead Friends’ in a new light. It quickly became clear that all we needed was more time.”
“‘Dead Friends’ is about just that, dead friends,” he continues. “It’s about the people in your life you’ve lost and the ones that have decided to lose you. Originally this song was completely instrumental until our drummer Trent (Mcintyre) emailed us an updated demo file which had massive drums and him shouting into the overhead mics on his kit. It was in that moment we knew we had stumbled upon something that embodied the full potential of the song. After demoing ideas with different lyrics and types of singing, we had found ourselves further away from where we started and knew we had to reach outward to find a fresh perspective.”
“This is when we decided to drop a line to our friend Dustin from one of our favorite bands, Glassing. We met Dustin, Cory and Comacho on our 2018 tour when we played two dates together in Texas. They let us crash at one of their houses and we got to know them on a more personal level through late night conversations about life, Death, and the fragility of friendships. We asked Dustin to be part of the song on the week our album was due to be mixed, He sent us his tracks within days. His words added weight, a sense of urgency and completed our vision for the song. Without Dustin’s vocals, ‘Dead Friends’ would be incomplete.”
Dustin adds, “From the track title I gathered that some inclusion of death was a necessary starting point in forming lyrics. The ending’s crescendo ushers a feeling of aggression and hopelessness, when I attempt to put this sound into words it would always come out as ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ok with losing my friends and dying myself.'”
“The single resolve I found from this was certainly an unexpected one. Simply put, friendships are bonds built from shared experiences but the one experience that we all have in common will always be death. I felt that this had to have some importance, maybe the bonds of our own humanity are something that also connects us? Taking the first blind step into the unknown, our modicum of comfort is our own mortal thread. Fear, pain, existence, the unknown calling that we all hear and the one answer we must all one day give.”
Listen to the new song here:
