Review by Saxy S for Skeletonwitch - Devouring Radiant Light (2018)

Devouring Radiant Light is the album that shows the diversity of Skeletonwitch as a band, in addition to the bands first (and so far only) progressive pivot. The 2000s were very kind to the blackened thrash group, but in 2018, Skeletonwitch put their thrash roots on the backburner for some progressive sounding black metal. 

And the result was a mixed bag. For starters, going from very short, fat free thrash metal the bands is known for, and replacing it with extended song structures as well as open chordal progressions in the guitar seems like a recipe for disaster. Songs like "Fen of Shadows" and "The Vault" have some decent passages that sound good on their own, but when paired with other, more clunky riffs, they begin to lose grandeur. The album does have some callbacks to the bands thrash roots, but their usage is not only minimized in importance, but also far more mellow; that is to say the overall tempo of the album feels much slower than ever before. Guitar solos are present with longer runtimes to help nurse the genre transition a little bit, and the percussion has not lost a beat and is just as ruthless as it was on previous records.

So why don't I like Devouring Radiant Light as much as previous albums? Well to explain, we have to look at it from a technical point-of-view. Here is a band who self produce all of their albums and have all but mastered the art of production of thrash with a blackened flare. Now here's that same bands reversing the order of genre hierarchy. The end result produces two glaring flaws. The first is in the production; because the riffs are more connected and flowing instead of choppy thrash riffs, the guitars can become overbearing and, on a number of occasions, block out the vocals of Adam Clemens entirely. Some of those climax points on "Carnarium Eternal" and "The Luminous Sky" sound crunchy as the mixing peaks and starts to explode in my ears.

The second great flaw comes in the compositions themselves. Now, as I mentioned before, some sections on these longer tracks sound great and prove to me that Skeletonwitch can write good songs even when they are pushed outside of their comfort zone. But without an outside voice who is more familiar with the traditional black metal sound or even the "new traditional" sound, Devouring Radiant Light loses some points just because it is not as well composed. If they could have employed someone familiar with bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, Deafheaven or Panopticon, it could have helped Skeletonwitch to write more concise tunes in this style. Instead, the composition of Devouring Radiant Light feels like a thrash metal band trying to make black metal.

This record is a band attempting to experiment, but going too far past their limits. I feel very similar to this record as I did when I reviewed Critical Defiance's The Search Won't Fall last year. Both are bands that have written very punchy thrash metal in the past, but are now going closer to the critic meta of blackened thrash. The short, quippy songwriting was a main feature of these bands earliest records, and that compositional style has been sidelined for more progressive songwriting. I know that this probably sounds hypocritical coming from me, since I always criticize groups for not pushing their sound forward, but perhaps some bands do not need that constant chase of progress. If Skeletonwitch ever come back to make music again, I hope they consider that.

Best Songs: When Paradise Fades, The Luminous Sky, Carnarium Eternal, Sacred Soil