It’s been a while coming, this album. And it has certainly been worth the wait. After being voted “Best Unsigned Band” for 2004 by the readers of Terrorizer, they have been snapped up pretty quickly by Anticulture Records. Gone is the slightly flat and muddy sound of much of the earlier tracks, this album screams life. A riff, an ever tightening electronic howl, an elephantine beat, and Skinless rips things wide open from the off. It gets better – vocalists Hal and Emmeline May trade lines and even words, staccato blastbeats underpin the track, which opens up into huge chorus. Not quite stadium sing-along…yet, but give it time.
No rest is allowed as each track bleeds into the next – Eradication sensibly slows the pace a little, chugging through while electronics twinkle in the background, while This Waking Moment is probably the biggest surprise here – a ballad. Both vocalists can sing as well as growl, as this track shows off well. The sense of calm doesn’t last long, though, as skittering breakbeats introduce Cause (with a fair reminder of Pitchshifter at their peak in there somewhere…), before a monster riff unleashes the full fury of the verses, with Emmeline May’s soaring vocal underpinning another big chorus. Things slow down again for Never//Lost, which again chugs through, star moment here being Hal’s sung bridge, before the gutteral growl returns again a split second later.
Anyone who reads the metal press will likely be familiar with Straight, and even after much more repeated listening than the rest of the album it still sounds fantastic. Slightly unusually titled The Hold (CDW) brings things back to ballad territory again, Creed speeds past in a blur of riffs and blastbeats, while {Cold Air} works well as an instrumental filler, but not much else. The last two tracks are both worth waiting for, though. Sleepless has a huge, echoed beat, that almost becomes hypnotic, while closer In Stasis lets rip one last time.
Clearly one of the greatest powers of the band is the way that the dual-vocalists weave in and out of each other so well – with the recent departure of Emmeline May from the band, and the newly-announced arrival of Christine Gajny, it will be interesting to see where they progress from here. Overall the album is very, very strong – and the sheer variety on show really helps. Here’s to album number two and further success!