SKINEATER — Dermal Harvest (review)

SKINEATER — Dermal Harvest album cover Album · 2013 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
J-Man
Death metal supergroups may be a dime a dozen these days, but every now and again one of them rolls around that is really worth your attention. Skineater is one such act. Hailing from Sweden and featuring musicians that have played with acts like Defleshed, Wombbath, and Carnal Forge (to name just a few), Skineater has a large amount of potential to live up to, and their 2013 debut Dermal Harvest thankfully delivers the goods. A stunning display of death metal styles old and new, Dermal Harvest manages to sound eclectic without sacrificing the genre's core values - Skineater has gotten off on the right foot with this one, and any fan of extreme metal needs to give it a listen!

The first thing that grabbed my attention about Dermal Harvest was how original it is from a stylistic perspective. Not content with being another Entombed clone, Skineater borrows plenty of ideas from old school death metal (particularly American acts like Deicide and Morbid Angel), classic melodic death metal, and even modern brutal death metal sounds. Skineater strikes a fine balance between melody and brutality, and their ability to shift gears from devastating machine-gun blastbeat assaults into fairly melodic guitar leads is remarkable. Although Dermal Harvest should not be mistaken for a melodic death metal album, the band's ability to subtly incorporate melodic phrasings into each of the tracks is remarkable.

Clocking in at around 37 minutes, Dermal Harvest is not a long album, but its duration is perfect for music this intense. It also doesn't hurt that each of the observation's ten tracks have some of the year's best extreme metal riffs; listening to songs like "He Was Murdered" and especially "Made of Godsick" show that Skineater don't mess around when it comes to songwriting. Most of the tracks on Dermal Harvest hover around the four-minute mark, which allows for each song to sound fully developed without coming across as drawn-out and boring.

In short, Skineater is a high-quality act and a real asset in the modern Swedish metal landscape. The group's knack for combining pummeling riffage with catchy songwriting and technical playing makes for one hell of a listen; this album has really stuck with me over the past few weeks. Dermal Harvest is a mesmerizing debut statement with some seriously interesting things going on, and whilst it may not totally re-invent the wheel, the album's original mix of death metal styles makes for an easily recommendable purchase.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

Tarantula Heart Sludge Metal
MELVINS
Buy this album from MMA partners
God Damned You To Hell Traditional Doom Metal
FRIENDS OF HELL
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Absence Melodic Death Metal
THE ABSENCE
Buy this album from MMA partners
Unextinct Technical Death Metal
HIDEOUS DIVINITY
Buy this album from MMA partners
Powerlords Power Metal
ELETTRA STORM
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

Fallen Ashes - Wage War (Official Lyric Video)
FALLEN ASHES
Bosh66· 5 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Unreality (Single) 2024
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 5 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Cold Hands
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 5 days ago
IRON MONKEY - Misanthropizer (Official Music Video)
IRON MONKEY
Bosh66· 8 days ago
??? (Losing ART) - "????" (Official Music Video) [HD]
漂浮者樂團
Bosh66· 8 days ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed