The onslaught of old-school death metal revival bands in the
past few years seem to be fairly concentrated in one of two camps: bands who
sound like Incantation and bands who sound like the classic Swedish death metal
bands (Entombed, Dismember, etc). Both of those styles are great, but it’s
always nice to have a band going even further back to the basics. With their
debut full-length, Skeletal Remains is bringing death metal back to its
Floridian roots. “Beyond The Flesh” combines the great riffs and soloing of
Death with the insane, demented vocal style pioneered by John Tardy (Obituary).
On top of that, there are quite a few evil moments that are eerily similar to
the atmosphere created by Deicide’s music. Even blastbeats are used sparingly. This band is about
as old-school as it gets these days and that is the exact reason why they are brilliant.
Perhaps the strongest part of this record is its superb
production. It sounds like “Spiritual Healing”, if that record had a slightly
higher snare. Everything else is quite similar: the kick drums have quite a bit
of punch, the leads are unbelievably crisp sounding, the bass is quite
prominent during the heaviest riffs, and the rhythm guitars provide the perfect
setting for those slow, tremolo-picked riffs that Death was famous for. “Beyond
The Flesh” is quite similar to records like “Leprosy” in that it doesn’t thrash
at full-speed relentlessly. Instead, the band makes use of well-placed changes
in tempo to keep things interesting. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of speed, it's just that the speed isn't abused like it is by a lot of death metal these days. As mentioned earlier, the absolute
highlight of this record is the guitar playing. Imagine if James Murphy, Andy
LaRocque, and Chuck Schuldiner (my personal favourite Death shredders) decided
to compile all of their best solos into one album; that pretty much sums up
this record.
“Beyond The Flesh” has almost all of the elements, but there
is one area where it falls short for me. Much like most of today’s death metal,
I find the songwriting monotonous. The record is fun while it lasts, but I can’t
quite sing along afterwards like I could with many of the older bands. It isn’t
so much the lack of good parts to the songs; the music is fantastic. The
problem is that the song structures don’t seem to be written in any sort of
recognizable fashion (at least not to me). I would imagine that’s the point,
and if you love that, you will absolutely love this album, but for me, it gives
me nothing to grab on to past the album title. I can’t even recommend any songs
in particular because they all seem very similar to me. I can’t fault Skeletal Remains
that much for it; this is their first record, and I have no doubt the
songwriting can only improve from here. With that said, the other parts to this
album are so unbelievably strong that you need to hear it.
Be sure to check out and like Skeletal Remains on Facebook!
Highlights
All of it
Final Rating
4.0/5 or 80%.
Written by Scott