REVIEW: Coma Witch – The End of Forgiveness [2025]
Artist: Coma Witch
Album: The End of Forgiveness
Let’s take a quick tangent based off the title of Coma Witch’s debut full length record’s title, The End of Forgiveness. As a whole, deathcore isn’t the most…forgiving genre. You either get it right—whether conventional, revival, whatever—an exceptionally rare occurrence, or, well, you don’t. With the genre’s recent surge in popularity, we’ve gotten more of both—you know, a rising tide raises all ships, so to speak. The latest (but certainly not least) of these acts to hit the timelines of breakdown enthusiasts worldwide is Coma Witch, with their debut record The End of Forgiveness. Built on a foundation of technical deathcore a la Beneath the Massacre and Burning the Masses with the goofy, tongue-in-cheek antics of acts like Eat a Helicopter. The result? Something reminiscent of those well-loved landmark acts, but in reality is much different and stands strongly on its own. The End of Forgiveness erupts as a surprise release not only in that had very little in the way of formal announcement, but in that it emerges as a strong contender for one of 2025’s finest deathcore offerings in a year where the bar is sky high.
At the risk of approaching this write-up in a more stream-of-consciousness fashion, The End of Forgiveness, despite the prior comparisons with some of deathcore’s more subtle legacy acts, doesn’t really sound so much like a particular band or style as it does an era. Borrowing bouncy technicality and sporadic, spastic song structure from the hyper-technicalization (I know it isn’t a word, back off) of death metal from the late 2000s and outright ruthlessness from burgeoning deathcore bands of…well, around the same time, this album just feels like my sophomore year in high school. Fast, precise and pummeling percussion underpin just about every second of the breakout effort from Coma Witch. “You Break Like Glass” alone showcases this, but no track highlights both the lightning-like percussion and jarring nosedives into the hypertechnical from the guitar and bass like “Trauma Queen.” Here, every instrumentalist in Coma Witch is firing on all cylinders, as at no point throughout the song’s modest three-minute runtime does the listener know what’s coming next—only that it’s going to be immense. However (and uncharacteristically for deathcore), to speak of Coma Witch and their instrumentation demands attention to the bass guitar. Whether it’s “You Break Like Glass,” “Bombing Eden,” “Schematics for Soporific Collapse” or “Mass Morality Recall,” quite a few tracks throughout The End of Forgiveness features a few moments where the bass breaks free from subtlety and serves as a jaw-dropping segue into a neck-snapping breakdown. “Mass Morality Recall” is a personal favorite—and not just for the True Detective sample—but because it brings all the elements that comprise Coma Witch’s musical mission into a glaringly sharp and smoldering, intense focus.
The End of Forgiveness earns its title with the vocal intensity and pointed venom packed behind the band’s vocal effort. You want gurgly, blood-soaked gutturals? You got ‘em. You want more brees and squees than a slaughterhouse? You definitely got ‘em. You want one-liners that stay in your head even after the breakdown that follows melts your brain? Well, sober up bitch, the party’s over…I mean, yeah, you’ve got those too. The vocal element throughout The End of Forgiveness is comprehensive in a robust, tasteful and unbelievably fun way. “I Want You Fucking Dead” and “Mass Morality Recall” are direct and immolating in their brand of lyrical violence, while “Detestimony” and “Schematics for Soporific Collapse” are, well, less intelligible and highlight Coma Witch’s range. It’s hard to pick one song or moment where the band’s vocals are better than any other—because they’re just that consistent across the entirety of the nearly half-hour LP. There isn’t a second that will leave the listener in want, and this is as true of the vocal element as it is any other aspect of The End of Forgiveness.
With a band name that borrows from one of The Acacia Strain’s top five LPs (argue with the wall), the expectations were high—and in a year where we’ve already gotten some genre-defining entries into deathcore, the consequences for failure were essentially immediate dismissal—Coma Witch exceed every expectation and renounce every notion of failure. The End of Forgiveness is a technical, bouncy, bold, brutal and jarring masterpiece that demands full and total attention from any fan of things that go chug, riff, bounce or snap in the night.
9.5/10
For Fans Of: Beneath the Massacre, Burning the Masses, Commotio Cordis, PSYCHO-FRAME
By: Connor Welsh
