SKELETAL REMAINS
The Entombment Of Chaos
Century Media Records
Given the gnarly band name and album title, songs like “Dissectacy” and “Unfurling The Casket”, and cover artwork from Dan Seagrave, you pretty much know what you're going to get from L.A.'s SKELETAL REMAINS – old school death metal. And the band has been delivering just that for the past decade.
But with an almost entirely new lineup since 2018's Devouring Mortality – with just frontman/guitarist Chris Conroy carrying over - the fourth album from the quartet offers a some tweaks to the formula and takes a few steps in a more contemporary direction. With a new school sheen to the production and a feistier delivery overall, it makes for a less derivative effort than much of the band's previous work.
Instead of being so slavishly rooted in the groove-and-puke histrionics of early DEATH or OBITUARY, The Entombment Of Chaos offers more aggression, velocity and dexterity as the new blood – bassist Noah Young, session drummer Charlie Koryn and guitarist Mike De La O, who playing with the band briefly back in 2011 - brings a fresh perspective and plenty of unbridled energy. Indeed, the album is a flat-out ass-ripper most of the way, with Koryn's stampeding tempos leading the charge and recalls the likes of MORBID ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE or Norway's ZYKLON.
After the predictably eerie intro “Cosmic Chaos”, the album blasts off with “Illusive Divinity” as Koryn unleashes a barrage of double-bass rolls and blast beats under the slashing riffs and careening solos of Conroy and De La O. And there's not much let up from there. “Congregation Of Flesh” takes the ball and runs with it before handing off to “Synthetic Impulse”, etc., as a the band keeps things moving steadily down the field, flattening anything in its path along the way.
And when the pace does change and the band jukes and jives, SKELETAL REMAINS rarely falls back on the meat-and-potatoes, slog-and-chug bag of tricks it had favored before. Instead, “Tombs of Chaos” and “Eternal Hatred” boast a grand scale, subtle complexity and majestic swells that make them genuine epics - especially with the more vibrant mix here from the legendary Dan Swanö that cleans up some of the mud and mush of old and gives things a modern punch. Both tracks are high points on an album that is pretty much full of them and show some welcome depth and guile.
You can hear that too in the subtle shift in tone and delivery of Conroy's vocals. Throatier, barkier and blunter here, in the mode of CANNIBAL CORPSE's George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, they too make the OBITUARY/DEATH worship less apparent - the breathy shouts and moans on “Congregration of Flesh” being one exception. The more assertive voice makes a better match for the band's fearsome approach on Chaos, yet adapt well to to the more dramatic “Tombs Of Chaos” and “Eternal Hatred”.
Though still firmly rooted in the old school – as indicated by the closing cover of DISINCARNATE's “Stench Of Paradise Burning” - The Entombment Of Chaos does nicely expand the SKELETAL REMAINS palate and adds more weapons to the band's arsenal. And with the band clearly benefiting from the new lineup's vigor, the payoff is immediate and lethal. Chaos probably still won't win any awards for originality, but it delivers a fresh blast of vintage brutality with undeniable purpose and zeal. And that works just fine for me.
4.0 Out Of 5.0
