Skinweaver

Skinweaver - Gratification Eternal
Great Dane Records, 2017
Genre: Death Metal

1. Apotemnophilia
2. Skinweaver
3. Malus Triumfat
4. Salvation
5. Kneedeep in the Flesh
6. Bastion of Butchers
7. Suffer Endless
8. Zombie Holocaust
9. Plague Bearer






Skinweaver was a bit of a random purchase on my behalf. I was picking up the new Hysteria album and while looking through the record labels releases I came across this release. The name and album cover screamed of "old school Death Metal", which I happen to love. Skinweaver reminds me of the Dismember song "Skinfather", so I was hoping the album was somewhere in that wheelhouse. "Gratification Eternal" is their debut album, with no demos prior and it's rare to find this quality out of the gate.

I feel like I'm seeing a bit of a resurgence of the old Death Metal style thanks to labels like Iron Bonehead, who seems to do everything the old way and maybe now Great Dane with more of a focus on Death Metal? After hearing this I'm going to start exploring their catalog more, because this debut from Skinweaver is absolutely incredible. It's everything I want from Death Metal, and this is coming from a person who primarily listens to Black Metal. I grew up with a lot of the old greats like Entombed, Dismember, Suffocation, Unleashed, etc. and Skinweaver definitely delivers on that idea. The really excellent aspect of this release is that it doesn't feel like a clone at all. You hear a myriad of influences in this album. You've got Dismember, Carcass, Sinister and old Hypocrisy all rolled together here and I feel like that's the core blend of their main approach. They stay heavily focused on creating catchy grooves and casting them amidst some crushing Death Metal. The production value of the album is excellent as well, everything feels very organic as opposed to the more modern sound where we don't really listen to real drums anymore. Some bands do okay with hyper production like Lost Soul, but most of the time it just sounds bad to me. Skinweaver has a really excellent compromise because it's certainly better production quality than early 90's Death Metal, but it sounds like we have real instruments being played. Based on their pictures of recording we're listening to the guitars driven by Diezel tube amplifiers, which gives a really nice crunchy tone to the guitars. The vocals sit nicely in the mix and have a ton of reverb on them which really works for this release, in my opinion. They never take over the mix either, which is great, because I hear that happen a lot, this way we can enjoy the riffs and this awesome powerful guttural shout their vocalist does.

In the end I was very happy with my random purchase and I'm going to have to look through and check out other bands on this record label. The booklet is a bit over simplified, but that kind of makes sense for a debut of a fairly unknown project. I'm just happy they went with pressing a CD instead of digital release only. If you miss the old days of Death Metal, well they are alive and well on this album. They pull it off without sounding like a clone and that is, by far, one of the most endearing parts of this album. A really killer debut and I look forward to whatever else they put out in the future now that this project is on my radar.