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Skull Collector > Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts > Reviews
Skull Collector - Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts

Chaotic, unforgiving perfection! - 93%

Matthias Van den bossche, October 20th, 2013

Introduction

Time for another Skull Collector review. After reviewing ‘And Then There Was…’, I figured that I could work my way through the whole discography all together. Reviewing their whole catalogue seems like a fun way to discover the details in the progress they are making with each album.

‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’ is Skull Collector’s first full length album. It certainly is an improvement compared to ‘And Then There Was…’ in terms of chaotic brutality. It sounds less structured. There are three main reasons for this: the nature of the compositions, the production and the introduction of a new vocalist.

Production

The production fits the music extremely well. It is exactly what Skull Collector needed to make this album work. Death metal has had its revolution and brutal death metal has been one of the most extreme products. However, this album doesn’t sound like any regular album you’d expect of labels like say ‘Amputated Vein Records’, except Emnity’s material maybe. It even sounds a little too rough for ‘Sevared Records’, the label which would distribute their future records. You will have to process a bizarre collection of all-over-the-place riffs, endless drumming madness without remorse and incredibly mean vocals. All of this is brought to the listener through a production so gritty and dirty, most people wouldn’t come near it. This is a proven fact, considering Skull Collector rarely plays live.

The guitars are found in the middle of the mix, though they tend to shift slightly to the left or right, depending on the song. Is this a recording error? It certainly is something that makes you remember the song in a weird way. The guitars maintain a constant presence because of their background-kind-of sound. Details are easily missed, though they surface over the course of several listening sessions. Nothing particularly stands out, the guitars sound homogeneous throughout the entire album. During some sections, or even entire songs (‘Cock Cutting Craft’, ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’), it sounds like a different setting was used. Because of the homogeneous character of the songs, such sudden differences feel like a welcome refreshment. The bass guitar has a gigantic influence on the music. The bass heard (felt, actually) on this album is an instant reminder to Mortician’s Will Rahmer. Though not sounding like static electricity, it does boost the music to a new level. A flaw in this regard: do not play this album using a good quality subwoofer, the bass will drown everything else. Especially the guitars would be pushed to the background even more. The actual bass guitar strings can be heard from time to time but usually don’t complement the song.

The unstoppable cascade of riffs finds its way through the songs on the wings of an insane, probably caffeine-infused drummer. The guy sounds unstoppable. The most pronounced features of the drum kit are clearly the cymbals, the ride and hi-hat cymbals in particular. They are the most important components which lead the riffs through the songs. They also kind of determine the flow and beat. This way they take over the role of the snare and bass drum, which have a lower overall volume. The bass drum can be compared to a river running deep under a mountain. Musically, it translates as an amorphous rumbling in the background. When listening closely, you’ll discover all kinds of details, but they’re buried deep. The snare drum sounds faint and doesn’t provide much in terms of ‘catchyness’. It doesn’t need to, it would compromise the feeling the album gives you. Along with the ride and hi-hat cymbals, the music’s flow is established by the vocals. Barbaric is a word that comes to mind when hearing those grunts and screams. The vocals remind me of Lord Worm, ex-Cryptopsy vocalist. Lord Worm created a unique form of vocal delivery which complements extreme (death) metal like no other vocal style could. Skull Collector’s new vocalist also utilizes a unique style of grunts and screams, which is an important component of the album. If you like Lord Worm, you’re probably going to like these vocals.

People who own ‘And Then There Was…’ will be able to compare the production of both albums by listening to ‘Slave Of Death’ and ‘Like Dust Upon Me’.

Album abstract

Enough about the sound itself, let’s talk about the actual music. Here’s an easy way to describe it: imagine a very extreme form of 90’s US death metal, though not modern at all. There are filler riffs, but also intelligently crafted ones. There are extreme blast beats, but also original fills. The compositions are technical, yet sound completely old school. Because of the way this album was recorded, everything sounds really organic. On the other hand, I recon it is not very accessible to many. This is one of the few Belgian bands I (as a Belgian) appreciate, but it took me some time. At first, you’d think you’re exposed to 36 minutes of death metal sounding noise. The longer you listen to the album though, the more it will offer. Details surface after several spins. Every song kind of sounds ‘the same’, but at the same time they have their own character. There are no filler songs to be found. Been only 36 minutes long, the album feels much longer because of the massive amount of content you have to take in. When listening to it, I’m reminded of bands like Mortician, Severe Torture, Suffocation, Cryptopsy and so on. All of this is to be found in the weird mix that is Skull Collector.

Conclusion

There is a reason why I gave the production so much attention. The production is definitely what makes the album unique. ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’ defines everything there is to like in underground brutal death metal. It’s the absolute best in its kind in Belgium. Skull Collector is paving its own path. If you like extreme forms of musical expression, this album deserves a spot on your shelf. People who like structured music better look elsewhere, this is not for the faint-hearted!

Only for the sick! - 82%

Noktorn, August 9th, 2007

I stubbornly refuse to believe that the guys in Skull Collector are from Belgium. Based on the style of brutal death this four-piece plays, they clearly hail from Colombia, not western Europe. The music here is just too raw and savage to resemble the polished, groovy death metal of their Dutch brothers to the north, nor does it have the grinding aspects of fellow French heshers in the southwest, or even the subtle melodic sensibilities of the Germans to the east. No, these guys have to come from the depths of South America, where the gore-fueled madness is performed in tiny, smoky bars and recorded on decrepit four-track, and everything seems to move a little too fast, or much too slow, or more complex where it should be simple, or any other things that shouldn't be but are...

The demented, ultra-oldschool cover art tells the whole story. Primitive, raw, ferocious: these are the words that define Skull Collector on their sophomore LP, 'Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts'. This is like Nunslaughter minus the punk bounce and plus a few buckets of gore: I wouldn't quite describe the musical style as oldschool, but it's most certainly not modern either. This album is the antithesis of cleanliness in any way: every aspect of it seems just slightly off-kilter, once again like the Colombian brutal death metal bands that I know and love. Hell, these guys seem like the faster, slightly more traditional, slamless brother of Carnivore Diprosopus on their 'Filled My Stomach With A Pregnant's Corpse' LP: they play similarly filthy, guttural, deranged styles of death metal with an emphasis on what amounts to punishing the listener with pure, unadulterated brutality.

The production reminds me greatly of early Mortician: slightly muddy, with indistinct guitar lines and slightly buried vocals. The drums are probably the loudest thing here, with a seemingly cheap and rickety kit tearing through what 'should' be with overly loud hi-hats and low dynamic sensibility. There are song structures present, but they get reduced to near incoherency as each band member keeps speeding up or slowing down, orbiting around the manic, frantic drum performance of Mark Van De Velde, which increases and decreases in volume, each track seeming to take every bit of his stamina out of him by its end. The tempo of the LP is overall very fast, almost too fast for the band members, who careen just barely out of control through the nine tracks of this album not unlike early Cryptopsy: the fastest member sets the pace, and it's up to everyone else to keep up.

Like another Colombian contemporary, Amputated Genitals, the band seems to delight in packing tiny flourishes of technicality into the streams of seemingly average (or less) technical skill. Small cymbal runs and fills or the occasional bizarre burst of lead guitar show that the band knows more than they normally let on, and yet most of the music has that loose quality of the South American artists. This is not a particularly riff-based album: most of the emphasis is on that core sound, much noisier than your average death metal band, bound together with the alternating high/low vocal performance of Kurt Straetemans. This really sounds like a four-piece: there's a sort of thinness and single-mindedness to the riffing that shows it's all the mind of a single person. I wouldn't say the songs are particularly memorable; most of them sound the same, only becoming something that sticks out in your mind during the rare moment when the band slows the fuck down for a moment, such as on the opening and closing of 'To Mince, Cleave And Cut', which almost makes one think of Suffocation ala 'Thrones Of Blood'. Without the significantly more scholarly leanings, of course.

This isn't music that's really meant to be listened to and enjoyed on recording. The noise is enjoyable in a different way: more in the pace of its delivery than what it's really delivering. I find the frantic, messy assault of this style to be incredibly enjoyable, and I'm sure it would be an absolute fucking blast to see live. It's music for a pretty narrow branch of listeners, even among brutal death. You have to get used to the slight sloppiness, the overly thick production, the fact that it's really not music about songwriting at all. But for those of us that have worn out our copies of 'Hacked Up For Barbecue', 'Garavito's Pedophilia Tales' or 'Perverse With The Dead', this should get on your shelf immediately. Brutal death only for the truly sick.

(Originally written for www.vampire-magazine.com)