by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
The death metal renaissance is in full bloom, or fetid seep, however you prefer to look at it. Not since the early 90’s has the genre flourished quite like these modern times, a time that has seen both a reinvigorated interest in the genre’s pioneers and a cavalcade of new bands embracing the OSDM sound. With any sort of resurgence comes reinvention, the will to push death metal into new extremes, to expand upon the framework, to scrape a new existence from a (positively) festering corpse. Much of death metal’s more “mainstream” crossover appeal in recent years has come from bands experimenting with hybrid genres, whether it be cosmic spaced-out terror, progressive leaning technicality, oozing melodicism, or sinewy crusted doom, we’re in the innovation phase. Skeletal Remains don’t seem all that concerned.
The Los Angeles based quartet - Mike De La O (guitar), Chris Monroy (guitar, vocals), Pierce Williams (drums), and Brian Rush (bass) - are making death metal records the way they love them, raw, mountainous, and classic. Fragments of the Ageless, the band’s fifth album is a colossal homage to riffs… big fucking nasty riffs, riffs that shred, riffs with hooks, brilliant razor sharp riffs, riffs that decimate everything else to rubble. Skeletal Remains nod to the past, sure, but their primal take on ruthless ODSM feels like an adaptation of their influences, a catalyst and reminder of why they play supremely evil sounding death metal in the first place. Fragments of the Ageless is a demonic beast come home to reign, the incarnate of chaos and carnage.
While eschewing over the top technicality or experimental genre splicing, there’s nothing “meat and potatoes” about the record, the album’s rotted fury feels corrosive at all moments, a brutal masterpiece set firmly in decrepit glory. Skeletal Remains are in fine form, and against all odds, they just keep getting better with every release. They are reliable, an impenetrable force, and for all it’s classic trappings, Fragments still feels like a breath of fresh air. Mining classic influences like Morbid Angel, Grave, early Gorguts, and Pestilence, the band offer a none stop rollercoaster of rhythmic slaughter and twin guitar riffs that dig and dig (and dig), the dirge balanced by the rampaging leads and combustible solos. Ever since Devouring Mortality, Skeletal Remains have been among the top of their class, a band that bludgeons with a lack of inhabitation, and they’ve reached their entrails strewn peak on an album that feels fully realized. With a degree of prog structures thrown in for dynamics, their writing moves beyond the “caveman” side of death metal. Each cavernous shift and violent stampede feels carefully composed, the song’s are balanced, sludgy and blistering, but more than anything, they’re built on riff based hooks. Real honest slap-you-in-face hooks carried out solely in De La O and Monroy’s guitar riffs.
“Relentless Appetite,” the record’s behemoth opener is like a bull in a china shop, the destruction instant and irreparable. Skeletal Remains come out swinging, thrashing, and triumphantly disgusted on a song that seems to invoke themes of cannibalism. The subject matter is matter of factly gross, and the brutal twists and turns follow suit. The entire thing feels like a freight train running at full speed while the track bends beneath it, but Skeletal Remains never falter, tossing in not one, but two blood curdling solos, and a density that could flatten us all. It’s a pace and intensity that the band are able to keep up throughout the record, highlighted on songs like the snaking “Unmerciful” and “Verminous Embodiment” with it’s clamoring cymbals and vocal depravity matched in non-stop surging riffs that shift only to come back heavier upon return. Their guitar playing and the band’s penchant for spidery solos has always been impressive, but it’s genuinely amazing throughout the record, a savage display of dexterity that peels the paint and rust from the walls.
Whatever Fragments of the Ageless lacks in overall dynamics, it more than makes up for in the record’s relentless shredding, Monroy’s near perfect apocalyptic bellow, and the endless flood of thunderous rhythms. Skeletal Remains haven’t made the weirdest album or the most forward thinking album the genre has to offer, but they have made one that’s buzzing with vileness, a perfect encapsulation of death metal’s noxious roots. It’s heavy as all hell with a primordial sense of gloom and destruction, but it’s fun, it’s really fucking fun.