Guitarist/vocalist Gui Haunting and drummer/bassist Jon Whiplash formed Skelethal five years ago, and in those five years the French duo released a nowadays-cult-as-hell demo, as well as two absolutely must-hear EP-sized slabs of oozing, creepy, yet totally-bludgeoning OSDM. In 2015 Pulverised Records released a compilation CD with all of that material and then some, but only now, six months deep into the year 2017, is the debut full length from Skelethal finally upon us.
If this is your first time hearing of them, let us catch you up. Skelethal play death metal, pure and steadfast. No frills, no gimmicks. Just pummeling drums, incisive, bonesaw riffs, mind-bending solos, and cryptic howls of death. Thousands of other bands do what Skelethal does, but Skelethal simply does it better. And, despite its title, their debut full length, Of the Depths . . ., is Skelethal at their deadly pinnacle. To put it succinctly: If Of the Depths . . . doesn’t end up as one of your top death metal albums of the year then you simply didn’t listen to it. To back up this strongly worded conjecture we’ve got an exclusive premiere of “Scaly Smell Flesh,” the seventh track from Skelethal’s Hells Headbangers debut.
“‘Scaly Smelly Flesh’ relates the transformation of a human corpse into an abomination: unknown forces raise the dead, his body experiences putrid mutation and his soul is filled with animosity,” explains Gui Haunting (guitars/vocals). Music-wise, Haunting says to watch out for “fast riffing [that] leads you to a morbid bridge to finally be slayed by infernal guitar solos.”
Get Of the Depths . . . June 23rd from Hells Headbangers.
