Skeletal Remains - Fragments of the Ageless (2024)^{Release ID: 50660}

I am unfamiliar with californian death metallers, Skeletal Remains, but a quick glance at the ratings for their five albums on RYM reveals that they must be quite a consistent band, certainly in respect to their recorded output. The opening track is titled "Relentless Appetite" and you'd better have one for brutal-sounding, aggressive old-school death metal worship because that is what you get here, unapologetic and unrelenting, in-your-face death metal, torn straight from '90's Florida and dropped onto the opposite coast thirty years later.

There is little subtlety or innovation here, but I found myself swept along on a tidal wave of relentlessly pummelling riffs with no time (or inclination) to ponder anything deeper than just hanging on for the ride. Chris Monroy's vocals are of the excoriating, sand-blasting kind, the solos are energetic and chaotic and drummer Pierce Williams is a busy man behind the kit, all of which contribute to the dynamism and sensation of being actively propelled through the album rather than being a passive spectator. It is the riffs that are king here, however, and they come thick and fast in a dizzying maelstrom of thundering power, boosted by a meaty production that gives them an unstoppable forward momentum.

Skeletal Remains are obviously influenced by the older death metal stalwarts and are equally obviously uninterested in the modern tendency in death metal towards pushing the envelope ever further with greater technicality, dissonance or whatever is flavour of the season, but instead their only desire seems to be to lay down brutal riffs that promote the lost art of headbanging, rather than the modern obsession with chin-stroking artisitic micro-analysis. It may not be the most artistically demanding, but this is exactly my kind of death metal - aggressive, thick-sounding, heavy as fuck, no-nonsense, unpretentious old-school worship that will leave you with a stiff neck and a feeling of having had a good forty-five minute workout.