Nightfly Bitterness And Burning Hatred is my first encounter with Finnish death metallers Skeletal. Turns out it’s their second album, the first, Dreadful Life being released back in 2017. I must admit that initially I wasn’t blown away by it, in fact it’s an album I’ve been blowing hot and cold with as subsequent plays had me alternating between average, good and very good. Overall though it seems to have left a favourable impression. After all, I’ve returned to it half a dozen times so there must be something there.

Skeletal’s death metal, whilst not getting into the realms of technical DM is pretty busy at times displaying a thrash edge. It’s aided by a crisp and organic sounding production, much preferable to the clinical and sterile sound that pervades plenty of modern death metal, especially at the tech end. From opener, Lower Than Filth, it’s clear these guys can play. Particularly impressive is the guitar work of Make Tiainen and Samuel Lehikoinen who also double’s up as vocalist, reminding me of Martin Van Drunen of Asphyx and ex-Pestilence. In fact on a musical level parallels can also be drawn with early Pestilence around the time of Consuming Impulse and while they don’t pack the sledgehammer approach of Bolt Thrower some of the guitar work shares a similar melancholic vibe that they often display. I’m not sure why this took so long to click as once the riffs get under your skin a surprising amount of melody cuts through, also present on some well thought out guitar solos all nimbly and fluently played. A couple of tracks I was blowing hot and cold with in particular were Concrete Salvation and Razors Edge. The former eventually won me over, simply requiring a few plays to reveal its complexities over its almost six minute length. Razors Edge, almost equal in length didn’t convert me in the end leaving little in the way of a lasting impression despite containing a fine guitar solo. Pick of the bunch for me is opener Lower Than Filth. After a Pacey start with some strong riffs the tempo drops and eventually locks into an insistent groove that had me wanting to hit repeat. Another strong contender is Apathy, at almost seven minutes the longest track on the album displays some progressive influences revealing another layer.

In the end Bitterness And Burning Hatred has come out on top. Not a classic by any stretch but Skeletal have impressed me more than enough to mark them a down as a band I want to keep an eye on and I would be surprised if we had a masterpiece from them in the future at some point.