Hello and welcome back to the Bandcamp Buried Treasure article series, where I'll be hunting down Buy It Now/Free Download-payment option albums on Bandcamp by the best bands you've never heard! The goal is to introduce you to smaller bands or obscure side-projects you might not have heard of. Anything to expand your musical horizons by just a little bit each week, all while keeping your cost (potentially) down! This week we'll be listening to Southern California's grime'd out, downright fucking filthy Skinfather!
If you'e ever jammed pretty much any of the hardcore acts like Southern Lord have signed, then you're already familiar with what Skinfather sounds like. They remind me a little bit of bands like All Pigs Must Die in terms of ferocity and anger, but roomy, gritty, disgusting distorted sounds like blunt axes ala Xibalba (and by that virtue Crowbar). There's even some elements of earlier Swedish death metal's buzzsaw guitar tone in there, which when melded all together with the punk and hardcore aspects of the music makes for one hell of a deadly concoction. The bottom line is that Skinfather should have been signed the second Succession/Possession dropped, or at least noticed by the masses as a force to be reckoned with… because seriously, holy shit.
The second you hit play on "Succession," you're banging your head and waiting for everything to explode. The beauty of the song is that it holds out for a little and just throws vocals over that, waiting for just the right time to destroy everything around it. The riffs change up, the drums start throwing in fills a little more, but the song never quite "blows up" in a speed-fest. Why? Simple- because if it did who would care after that? There's nowhere to go. For five minutes Skinfather play with one groove and mutilate it into a thousand forms, each one just as interesting as the last until it drags along with all it's wounds and bruises and dies a violent, loud death. Why go for speed when you just smash skulls in over and over again? "Possession" brings on all the speed you wanted on "Succession" just as much as it does break the fuck down and plod along in the best way possible… and "Execute Them All," the last track, lives up to it's name. Classic death metal in a hardcore styling.
Overall I'm thoroughly impressed with Skinfather. They've got all the riffs that would impress your average death metal fan, all the production that would please the punk and hardcore crowd, and all the heaviness that would please just about anyone who's looking for a damn find metal record/EP to listen to. Check out their Bandcamp for their other album as well, because it's totally worth it!
