Discovering music used to be so hard.

Usually, you were entirely reliant on the help of a tastemaker friend or a record store employee who had the time to sort through the silt to find the gold they’d pass on to you. Besides that, you could scour the websites of record labels you liked or study the liner notes of your favorite CDs to find what bands the bands you liked would work with. Then you’d take all of that to the P2P network that hadn’t been shut down or overrun with viruses yet and hope that the file you downloaded was properly labeled (it usually wasn’t).

These days, great music just falls in your lap, via the recommendation algorithms of your streaming service of choice and the endless stream of posts from likeminded music fans online. Or, in the case of Coastlands, the band might just start following you on TikTok and end up being super good.

Anyone who knows my music tastes knows that I have a huge affinity for loud, low, sludgy guitars played at slow tempos and minor keys. Coastlands delivers that in spades, offering up dark post metal in the tradition of Russian Circles, Cult of Luna (without vocals, anyway), and Pelican. Vocals are mostly absent (except for “Dead Friends,” featuring screams from Glassing vocalist Dustin Coffman), the distorted guitar lines more than capable of carrying the narrative on their own.

And while most of the album traffics in threatening heaviness, there’s plenty of earnest beauty across these nine tracks. “Dead Friends” is almost delicate before the screamed vocals come in, the guitars tracing major key melodies with the rhythm section largely subdued. Even at its heaviest, it is primarily ambient, the guitars concerning themselves more with texture than riffs. “Abandoner” gives a good taste of what to expect, the guitars shredding tremolo lines run through heaps of reverb and fuzz, leaving almost every bit of concern for rhythm to the bass and drums.

It’s sometimes hard to write about these sorts of records as I listen to so much of it, and most of these bands concern themselves with the same proportions of atmosphere and volume. But there’s something special that happens when the formula is mixed with the exact right ratios of ingredients. I can’t quite explain why I enjoy Coastlands so much and Thårn not at all. All I know is that when this type of post metal is done well, it hits me just right. And Death definitely does just that.