(written by Islander)
Yeah, Skulld dropped the “e” from their name but it still sounds the same and it still accurately portrays how their music may leave you feeling, i.e., skulled, and you won’t need an exam in a blue concussion tent on your playing field to provide confirmation. Your inability to form a complete sentence will be sufficiently diagnostic (except for those of you have that problem all the time).
But in truth, Skulld’s new album Abyss Calls To Abyss has a great many other things going on in the music besides furiously ramming your head until you wake up to the most abominable conditions of life as many people must now endure it. Unquestionably, it is indeed a loud and angry deathpunk wake-up call, but it has deeper dimensions as well, in both its lyrical themes and its musical spectrum.
Below, we’ll dig into those depths and altering dimensions, but the main thing we’re doing is proudly giving you the chance to hear the album from front to back in advance of its January 30 release by Time To Kill Records.
To begin our deeper excavation of what Skulld have accomplished, here’s the band’s own statement:
Waiting for the upcoming snow moon, when everything seems to stop in the winter chill, we are pleased to present our latest work, Abyss Calls To Abyss, eight tracks of old-school death metal with a punk urgency but esoteric overtones.
Abyss Calls to Abyss is a ritual, a manifesto, a sonic and spiritual exploration, a journey into the abyss that questions the dogmas of patriarchal society and celebrates darkness as a dimension of awareness, power, and healing. The descent is only the beginning of a shamanic process toward a necessary awareness: there is no life without death, wound without healing, summit without abyss.
This conceptual merging of “feminist and pagan themes, esoteric reflection, and socio-political awareness” is intriguing, as are the literary references that underlie the lyrics, and so is the intended meaning of the album’s title, which represents the abyss “as both an inner and outer dimension: a place of dissolution and regeneration, death and renewal, where individual and collective struggles mirror one another” (to quote the label).
Struggle is indeed a vital aspect of what the music embodies. That’s evident from the opening song, “Healing the Wound“, which discharges vividly throbbing and maniacally swirling riffs, furiously clobbering beats, fierce hardcore howls, and vicious guttural roars.
The song’s passion is explosive, and it slugs very hard, yet it also reveals melodies that eerily wail, and blaring chords that sound wounded and at times desperate. But at least judging from the music, the healing of the wounds means not backing down — Skulld’s seamless blend of death metal and crust punk is unmistakably full of blood-pumping fight.
The other songs don’t back down either, but as previewed earlier, they do reveal other dimensions. “The Blink” is a riotously roiling and feverishly battering fury but it also sends up brazen sonic fanfares, erupts in enormous percussive detonations, spins out an electrifying solo, and even begins to sound like a diabolical ritual. Moreover, the blend of vocals, which include chant-like singing, is spine-tingling (as it is throughout the album).
Even two songs in, you’ll also realize how punchy Skulld’s songs are. The riffing is often totally crazed but the band frequently make room for pile-driving grooves and battering-ram blows, as well as plenty of skull-snapping snare-work.
And while the songs are usually hard-charging and often brazenly anthemic, they also make room for swirling upper-range melodies that create an unearthly aura, and for feverishly convulsing or slowly slithering guitar-leads that sometimes channel moods of anguish and despair.
Skulld also aren’t above sticking in a viscerally mosh-inducing breakdown right after a megawatt dose of voltage, which is one reason why “Wear the Night as a Velvet Cloak” is such a standout song (the song’s haunting penultimate phase is another reason).
We should also call out “Le Diable and The Snake“, which is both devilishly sinister in its poisonous tremolo’d riffing and home to some neck-wrecking chugfests, but also includes a slower final phase that’s steeped in oppressive gloom, as well as the well-named “Drops of Sorrow“, which at first is the album’s slowest and melodically its most grief-stricken track, but will also jackhammer listeners into the ground, and the soloing spectacle that helps “Sacred Fires” send off the album in a blaze.
To underscore one point one more time about all these songs: They’re loose and loud, frenetic and furious, muscle-punching and head-ramming, but also dynamically elaborate — packed with changing experiences and moods — and sharply executed. They intertwine the raging passion and body-slamming punch of punk with a wide range of Swedish-style death metal traditions, including melodeath, and eviscerating blackened riffing as well. It’s a winning combination.
SKULLD LINE-UP:
Pamela – Vocals
Monti – Guitar
Rappo – Guitar
Moqi – Guitar
Ciufs – Bass
Teo – Drums
We should include this note from the label about the album’s striking cover art: “The record is visually enriched by an original oil painting from Neapolitan artist Roberto Toderico, who perfectly captures the atmosphere of Abyss Calls to Abyss. The artwork depicts an almost lunar landscape where the violent gesture of a hooded woman slitting a demon’s throat contrasts with a dreamlike, surreal, oceanic aura; a setting in which the abyss is both visually and symbolically ever-present.”
Time To Kill Records will release Abyss Calls To Abyss on many formats — LP vinyl, CD, cassette tape, and digital — and they recommend it for fans of: Entombed, Dismember, The Crown, Trap Them, and Martyrdöd. Find pre-orders via the links below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://skulldband.bandcamp.com/album/abyss-call-to-abyss
https://timetokillrecords.com/
SKULLD:
https://skulldband.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/skulldband