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Skinlab > Revolting Room > Reviews
Skinlab - Revolting Room

Gems in Shit - 63%

lostalbumguru, November 11th, 2023
Written based on this version: 2002, CD, Century Media Records

Skinlab was everywhere in the metal magazines in the late 90s and early 00s. Their mix of groovy nu-metal is perfect for that era, and Revolting Room is their attempt to make the ultimate nu-metal album, and, to some extent, they succeeded. The instrumental side of things is actually quite good, and fairly heavy. The vocals are decent, if slightly all over the place. The lyrics are sometimes tedious and a little immature and not even that good by nu-metal standards, but they aren't all facile, and sometimes there's a sharp line or chorus to help the song reach a point of some kind. The song structures are pretty honed into heavier nu-metal, with simple tempos and structures throughout Revolting Room. Samples turn up here and there lending a cold industrial Spineshank or Pulse Ultra vibe to proceedings.

There's certainly a dark tormented emotionality on Revolting Room, that Skinlab pushes to a pretty extreme level. In Flames were obviously an influence to some degree, and to be honest at some points on Revolting Room, the music is just metal, no nu-metal about it. The drums are quite hypnotic, and well-played, even if it's the same 3 drum patterns every time. The production on Revolting Room is also pretty good, and the drums and vocals are both mixed excellently. The bass is also very thick and locked-in, and clearly audible whenever the guitars drop out. The guitars are competently played but mostly don't really offer anything exceptionally interesting, and are under lock and key to the songs themselves, probably to the slight detriment of both, except toward the last third of Revolting Room, where Skinlab lets its musical ideas breathe a lot more.

Apart from the slightly clumsy and facile lyrics here and there there's not a lot to hate about Revolting Room. It's not the cleverest album ever made, but it's not as stupid as claimed either. The music is deliberately pared back to serve an album concept, but it's not boring, and there's a fair about of subtle variation throughout. Disturbing the Art of Expression is very 2002, with the Soulfly-inspired vocals, and very loud funk-inspired drum beats, and Anthem for a Fallen Star is a lot of fun, being faster and lighter on its feet than other songs on Revolting Room. You wouldn't even say Revolting Room is unoriginal. There's a difference between being able to hear a band's influences and a band being completely in reference to those influences.

So, good drumming, good bass, decent vocals, quite good song-writing, good cover art. Suspect lyrics, and somewhat anonymous guitars. What's really the issue here? Is it sometimes fun to run down a band because other people have run them down? Listen to Revolting Room with no preconceptions, you'll be surprised. It's both of its time, and better than people realise, without being a great album by any means. The addition of fan phone-calls to a Skinlab hotline makes quite a fun outro, a mixture of silly, and heart-warming. Skinlab probably knew it was all over for them at this point, and made an album for themselves and the people they knew already liked Skinlab. It's kind of a secret album in that respect, it's out there but it wasn't made for you. If you pretend you're overhearing someone else's listening experience, it all hangs together. If you take it on your own terms, it's still not a bad album. Quite good in places, completely early 00s, and not deserving of the scorn lavished on it in the years since.

At the time Skinlab were a viable musical entity, they probably meant a lot to American youngsters, young people trapped in the hinterlands of places nobody knows about apart form their inhabitants. Looking back from 2023, you can't see what the fuss is. Revolting Room is pretty good in some ways, and the bad parts are such you can turn a blind eye or deaf ear or something.

I know the tide is coming soon
I'll never turn my back now
I'll never turn my back on you
I'll guess I'll see you on the other side
Why does it have to be this way?
I'll guess I'll see you on the other side
How could you put us all away?
I'll guess I'll see you on the other side
I'll guess I'll see you again someday
For What? For what?
All I know it's too late to turn back now

In this world, nothing is certain except Death, Taxes, and Skinlab - 0%

Slater922, February 21st, 2021

Nu metal is an interesting genre to say the least. Being mainly popular in the late 90s to early 2000s, nu metal would be a gateway to the metal world for many people. The genre was also diverse and included many styles, whether it be a mix of groove and funk metal or straight up rap metal. And while the genre certainly had its bad moments, there was some sort of beauty to it all. Even if you despise the genre (which is understandable), you gotta admit that there were bands like Deftones and System of a Down who offered an alternative sound to their music and weren't exactly "jumpdafuckup" in their style. Even bands like Slipknot or Static-X would get rid of the style later on in their careers in exchange for other genres. Nu metal may not be for everyone, but it is certainly unique.

And then you got bands like Skinlab. They were originally a below-average groove metal band, but in 2002, they decided to hop on the nu metal bandwagon with their third album "Revolting Room". Well, let's just say "revolting" is a good adjective to describe the album, because it's easily one of the hardest nu metal albums I've ever sat through. It's at best a poor attempt to capitalize the genre and at worse a complete embarrassment that should've never been released. Whether it be the uninspired instruments, or the lousy vocals, there's no enjoyment to be found in this album.

Let's start off with the instruments. Skinlab wasn't well-known for their instrumental work during their groove metal-era, but it was nothing compared to this. Most of the instruments are extremely generic, with the guitar riffs playing boring and tiresome riffs and the drums beating in inconsistent patterns. A good example of this would be the track "Come Get It". The guitar riffs start off okay, but it quickly descends into a mess of riffs that don't connect to each other at all. Paul Hopkins's drumming skills aren't any better, as the drum patterns he plays sound like what most other nu metal bands were doing at the time. These dull instruments are all over the place in this album, and don't offer anything new and creative.

But if you think the instruments are the worst parts, wait till you hear the vocals. Steev Esquivel's vocals on the previous two albums weren't anything special, but they were okay and flowed decently with the instruments. In "Revolting Room", however, his vocals hit a new low. The screaming that he does in many parts of the album are unlistenable, like in the track "Slave the Way". There, he sounds like he's gonna blow his voice, and they don't flow well with the slower moments in some parts of the track. His more "calmer" moments aren't much of an improvement, as in some songs like "Purify", his singing sounds fake and poor, and it feels like he's trying to copy Corey Taylor in terms of vocal delivery. The vocals in this album was abominable, and were better off not being in the album at all.

And of course, there's the lyrics. Nu metal isn't exactly known for having the best lyrical moments, but even within those standards, the lyrics suck. In the track "Take as Needed", the lyrics quote:

Take as needed only for pain
I don't take it just to take away the pain
I need it to help me get me through the day
I bring it now I need it
but I take as I need it only for pain


The lyrics talk about how someone takes drugs as a way to get rid of the pain. The lyrics themselves sound okay on paper, but the execution is horrendous. Esquivel shrieks a lot of the lines, and you can barely understand the words he's saying, even when you are reading the lyrics with him. And there are some lyrics that don't even make sense. Back to the song "Slave the Way", the lyrics quote:

Everybody got their own opinions, right?
Everybody got their own decisions, right?
Everybody got their own ass on the line
Everyone slave the way, pave the way, slave
All the people scream!


These lines say that while people have their own opinions, they still "slave away" and scream. But shouldn't the point of slavery be that all the slaves share the same opinions instead of having different thoughts? And once again, the lyrics are awfully executed by Esquivel's ear-piercing shrieks. While I didn't expect any Shakespearean material, at the same time, I would've appreciated some effort.

Overall, this was easily one of the worst nu metal albums I've ever listened to. The instruments are extremely generic and monotonous, the vocals are terrible, and the lyrics might as well have not been written at all. It especially pains me to know that there are some genuinely good artists in the nu metal genre that have made some of the best songs in the genre, yet crap like this steers people away from listening to the great stuff. There are some albums that were just better off not being made, and "Revolting Room" is one of them.

Truly Revolting - 0%

The_Ghoul, May 9th, 2014

Or alternatively titled, "What Zeros are Meant For." Ah yes, Skinlab. The deplorable Skinlab. The woefully generic and misconceived Skinlab. I wouldn't give two shits about this band if it weren't for a friend of mine who encountered them through his connections to the bay area thrash scene (and thus to Defiance, Steev's older band.) I still didn't bother to review the garbage I encountered until it dawned on me why this is terrible on a level all unto its own.

The reason for this is that one one level, you have Skinlab's annoying tendency of writing meandering songs that go nowhere with overreliance on power chords and the extreme inability to move their songs forward, resulting in songs that sounds much longer than they are and will put even the most hardened groove fan to sleep. Add in Steev's sloppy and drunken-sounding vocals and that's the formula for every Skinlab album. The difference between ReVolting Room and the previous albums is that this is an obvious ripoff of seemingly every numetal band ever. That is to say, their target wasn't a really lofty aspiration, as most numetal could be done by people who had been only playing their instruments for a couple years and doesn't feature particularly inventive or exciting songwriting to boot. The only thing challenging, I surmise, about Skinlab's approach would be the vocals, and not in a good way, either, but rather to do those I'd have to forget everything I learned about how to do vocals, both dirty and clean, right, and about proper vocal technique, because Steev sounds like he's aiming for a combination of David Draiman from Disturbed, Chad Grey from Mudvayne, Corey Taylor from Slipknot, and some cleans that I guess he's going for a Papa Roach-style sound with, but it ends up sounding like a drunk hobo trying to sing "Last Resort" or "Down With The Sickness" at a karaoke bar at 2:00 in the afternoon. Let this conundrum sink in: he's doing an imitation of an already shitty style, and failing at that.

As far as the guitars go, expect endless chugathons that would put this band's previous output to shame. I don't even know why they have 2 guitarists for this album; one is clearly enough for these simpleton patterns. The drums may speed up a little bit, like on Take as Needed, or be pure jumpdafuckup, like on Disturbing the Art of Expression (guess which band they ripped off on that song) but the guitars never change their approach, which is a one dimensional chug chug chug chug chugathon. Like, I'm pretty sure this entire album is nothing but chugging, with few actual riffs to go along with the mess. The guitars may sound large and well produced, but so is anything polluting our radio waves, and I'm not gonna rate this any higher just because some buffoon paid a good sum of money on the production values. What I value is composition, performance, and creativity, 3 things this album does not possess.

Lyrically, this is about as retarded as you would expect from Skinlab; the combination of tuff-guy posturing and angsty whining which dominated since their debut (Pain Comes to Surface, anyone?) and I would expect nothing more from this "lyrical master". In the long run, even the mallcore kiddies didn't buy into Steev's scheme here, and it seems that you can't just fake your way to success. For being a shoddy imitation of an already shitty product that was about as trendhopping as it gets, I deem there to be no redeeming qualities in ReVolting Room. Skinlab would've been better off spending their money and time buying hookers and blow, it would've been just as productive but less infuriating to those subjected to this blather.

And for some audio I'm sure Steev put on there just to stroke his ego, listen to the Skinlab hotline. What a bunch of flunkies and sycophants.

At Least It's Not Supercharger - 20%

psychoticnicholai, December 15th, 2013

Revolting room is the album that saw Skinlab cave to the nu metal trend that was going on at the time and taking so many other bands under with it. Skinlab though really doesn't have much to lose as they were never a good band to start with, so no expectations were really let down. While Disembody: The New Flesh was an improvement over their debut, Skinlab decided to throw any credibility they had supposedly gained from that release away for a little bit of money while the nu metal gravy train was still running. Bad decision, this album ended up putting the band out of business just after the nu metal crash of 2003 that put so much of that scene and all it's wretchedness back into the underground. This album is a testament to trend-following, mediocrity, and the dated "hot topic metal" style.

Skinlab have definitely changed with this release. They've abandoned the rough and angry chugs of Disembody and instead went for more of a sound that apes Slipknot. Steev yells almost exactly like Corey Taylor with his soft-loud delivery of vocals and it's just as sloppy and disoriented as Slipknot's singer. Steev can't clean sing worth for shit and loves to leave "clean" vocals all over, ruining any potential mood that the guitars convey. As a matter of fact, the whole styling of the band has shifted from Machine Head ripoff to Slipknot ripoff with the aforementioned vocals, plus nu-metallish guitar effects that include "psychedelic" distortion and 2-note chugs, tough-boy posturing coupled with the whole "tortured soul" theme, and pop hooks that are forcefully put into a vocal delivery with no coherency or rhythm.

Revolting Room's songs all seem to fall into the bucket of nu metal cliches. The songs slug by and are often full of disorganized screaming and uninterested singing that spew various angsty messages like "get out of my head" and "someone kill me." The psuedo-ballads that try to give some semblance of genuine emotion, but almost always sound like plastic teenage angst personified like Purify, Disturbing The Art Of Expression, and Anthem For A Fallen Star infest this album like termites in a decrepit house. It's a shame, some of those could have been listenable if Steev's shit-smeared vocals didn't spoil them. There are also these really unusual transitions, some of them including these absolutely nonsensical phone calls. Revolting Room however, like Slipknot's debut, also has only one good song near the beginning, the stomp-fest Slave The Way. Slave The Way is still kind of unoriginal in the fact that it pretty much follows the formula for Slipknot's song (Sic) in which you have a buildup riff that launches into a chugging stomp-fest that later ends with a slower part that chugs slowly into the end until it roars back up for a second before finally quitting. The remainder of the songs are generic nu metal fodder that you could find with any cut rate band from this era. The songs almost all have this "woe is me" melodrama to them with only a small sprinkling of impotent rage that leaves the album feeling soft and stale as a result.

The dumbest part of this album is the "Revolting Hotline" hidden track at the end with idiots yelling Skinlab's praises to the high heavens. They curse so much it becomes ridiculous. They also love to growl incomprehensible messages and make meathead postures over the phone. The stupid things these people say makes it seem like a deleted track off of a fucked up comedy album. Seriously, look for the revolting hotline if you want a good laugh at the dumb mooks on the phone line.

Revolting Room is a boring and not so special exercise in nu metal mediocrity. None of the songs will stick or strike a chord with you and Steev's beleaguered vocals do nothing to help that along with the same riffs you've heard a million times before from Korn, Slipknot, and their various hangers on. Skinlab have moved on from ripping off Machine Head to ripping off Slipknot with their musical endeavors. But overall, it's still better than the mess that was Supercharger, the album this is most compared to. Why? well Revolting Room was simply bad in a boring way, not in an irritating, scraping, annoying way like Supercharger. The incessant crying vocals that riddled Supercharger are replaced by the boring uninterested vocals that are all over this release. Plus the guitars are a little heavier on this release and there are a few okay riffs that rarely appear on this as opposed to the light, tinny, completely chuggy mess that was Supercharger.

Even so,This album should be left behind and forgotten. It really doesn't stand out at all and has no originality. My advice; Just download Slave The Way for a few cheap jump-around moments and just pretend the rest of this album doesn't exist so that you don't have to bother sitting through the terrible vocals, forgettable riffs, and the innumerable cliches. I'm just glad to be done with this drek.

The Ultimate Indignity - 8%

JamesIII, January 8th, 2010

At one time, I became something of a drop off point for my friends' various unwanted CD's. No matter how bad it was, I usually didn't say no to a free CD. While I did gain a few decent listens from this, I was left with a respectable collection of music ranging between mediocre and full blown crap. One of these that stands out particularly in my mind was my introduction to Skinlab. I had never heard of this band before at that time, and upon my curiosity I inquired as to what they were like. My friend simply stated "they sound kinda like Machine Head." Not being horribly offended by that band, I expected something halfway decent.

Instead, I got two albums in "Bound, Gagged and Blindfolded" and "Revolting Room." The former was absolutely nothing to get excited about nor glorify, but the second was an absolute travesty. I would even branch out say this album defies what metal is, and it does rip-off Machine Head, but it rip-offs Machine Head circa 1999-2001. Yes, this is basically a poor man's attempt at the all out shits-a-mania that was "The Burning Red" and "Supercharger." While I can tolerate Machine Head from time to time, those two albums are not welcome in my listening collection, so you can guess a two bit knock-off isn't either.

Upon my research of this miserable band, I found out that they hyped this album up something good. They spoke of it highly, calling it their "most important" release up that point. I'd agree in some ways, as after "Disembody: The New Flesh," Skinlab sat poised to make something of themselves. That previous album was decent at best, but showed some potential as a reliable post-thrash band who could write a tolerable metal song when their lives depended on it. "Revolting Room" is a hop to trends, jumping off one trend onto another like a common street walker does with her customers. Such actions being taken are particularly disgusting when it involves mallcore, which in my opinion is not a metal genre at all. I guess their reasoning was that they couldn't succeed as a groove band so they'd figure they would try mallcore. Too bad they didn't realize that by 2002 that scene was dead and nobody really wanted to hear a cheap imitation of
nu-metal's miserable existence summed up on one album.

What you get on this album is a Skinlab who has decided to rid themselves of any positive aspects once possessed. Steev Esquivel, the once tolerable frontman from Defiance, is not putting forth some uninspired screams and flat melodic vocals that made Rob Flynn's performance on "The Burning Red" sound acceptable. I never cared for Esquivel before, but now he's beyond forgettable, he's downright horrid. The nightmares continue to abound when he goes into that Jonathan Davis patented "scat" vocals. Actually, I guess it wasn't that bad, it was more comedic than anything else because I didn't pay any money for it. If you actually shelled out some green for this album, be it $2 or brand new, the only thing worth laughing at is you, 'cause you've been suckered in big time.

The album is basically a complete and thorough compilation of each and every mallcore cliché. This traveller's guide to artistic death dives into a number of bands, like Slipknot, Korn, The Deftones, Machine Head ("Supercharger") and Soulfly. Soulfly is mentioned because Esquivel often mimics Max Cavalera during his "soul-searching" (i.e. mediocre) musical output. We even get a little System of a Down thrown in there, minus the smug and crappy political lyrics, and even a little Powerman 5000 on "Anthem of a Fallen Star." In short, you get every thing that sucked about late 90's, early 00's mallcore compressed into this neat package, right down to the weird and sorry excuse for an album cover.

If I had to pick one song that was bearable, I'd probably go with "Purify." It stays away from those testicle shrinking "scat" nonsense found on tracks like "Slave the Way" and "Take As Needed." The song itself is more in the vein of pure alternative metal, and not necessarily of the mallcore kind but its pretty damn close. Keep in mind that I said "tolerable," as its still pretty far from enjoyable and keeping in mind the comparison here as this album is far beyond terrible.

As you have guessed, Skinlab sucked it up big time. I never knew there was anything worse than "Supercharger," "Roots" or Soulfly's debut effort. To a degree, this doesn't make any real ambitions like those albums did, nor has anyone yucked this up as something "revolutionary" and "enchanting" the way some people have for those three. Still, even with zero ambition and practically everyone on earth deciding it sucks, "Revolting Room" gets no sympathy from me. It was the train wreck end to a mediocre career for Skinlab, whom I understand is back together with a new album out. Wonderful. It just seems to prove that the lowest of the low just don't know when to quit.

Shit like this doesn't surprise me. - 5%

Sigillum_Dei_Ameth, October 6th, 2009

Today I decided to review most of Skinlab's entire dischography. Why? Because maybe somewhere along the years I have this guilt of being too mean to them. If you fucking haven't figured it out by now they are the biggest Machine Head clone around. Don't tell me that deserves a chuckle of two. I mean, you take one look at them and you don't have high hopes on their musical output.

With that said, Skinlab showed some light of promise with their second album. Their first album was complete and total shit that would put a human to sleep and make babies cry. Now we are on their third album "reVolting Room" and already it's looking bad by the stupid album title. What is inside of the room is anybody's guess; groove metal riffs, whiny vocals, music with no direction, etc. But with "Revolting Room" the band just says themselves "Y'know we were bad before but I think we can be even shittier with this album by trying to attempt at being mainstream." That's right; they go Nu-Metal. They took every bit of hope from their second album and flushed it down the toilet.

Jump-da-fuck-up riffs, oh and lots of them. The well they drank water from is endless with jump-da-fuck-up riffs and everything that was stereotypical of Nu-metal. "Slave The Way" should have been on "Disembody" but the rest sounds like a bad attempt at trying to sound like Disturbed. I dunno how much more I can further go into the lameness. "Purify" would have been a good track to be put on the radio and maybe that's what Skinlab was going for with this album in trying to obtain a bigger audience. There are parts where Steeve tries to Rap and, aw fuck it, I can't pain myself any longer to go into how horrible this album is. It's 2 points more than their debut which should give you an indication of how this band sucks so hard.

Machine Head came out with "Supercharger" so I guess Skinlab had to do their version by calling it "Revolting Room." Is there any difference? Not really, but then I rather suffer by listening to "Supercharger" than listen to this piece of crap. Another reason to avoid Skinlab.

One of the Worst Albums Ever - 15%

mikeald, September 7th, 2008

I ended up selling this album for $5 to a local record store, to bad they didn’t know what they were buying. That record store ended up going out of business. I decided to check to see if this album was still there on the last day…and it was, looks like it’s in a dumpster somewhere.

This is the third Skinlab album, here we see the boys venturing into nu-metal. Before they were Machine Head clones then Sepultura clones. The difference between Machine Head and Skinlab is that, no matter how much Robert Flynn rapped away during their nu-metal stage its still 100 times better than anything contained on this train wreak. Steev CANNOT sing. Billy Corgan looks like Pavarotti compared to this guy. Songs like “The Disturbing Art of Expression” and “Jesus Sells” sound like they were recorded while Steev was hung over.

The guitar riffs are unoriginal and sound like Machine Head rejects at best. Song structure is a poor attempt to capitalize on the nu-metal scene. Drums and bass don’t do anything that is worth mentioning. Vocals when screamed are good but that doesn’t save the album from any credibility.

At the end of the album there is a large amount of filler from the “Skinlab Hotline” which was fans of the band calling in and leaving messages on how much they loved Skinlab. It’s funny to listen to since most of them state that Skinlab is “the most hardcore metal band on the planet.” Mind you that this was recorded before the release of this album, I think some of their fans might retract those statements after hearing this.

Don’t waste your hard earned money on this album, buy something better. “Slave the Way” is the only decent song and was the sample song that Century Media released hiding the nu-metal factor of this album. If you want a laugh listen to the “Skinlab Hotline.”