Progression Towards Evil

While I was exploring the 90s NYDM scene, I chanced upon a hidden gem that truly deserves attention and recognition in today's music landscape. This album delivers an organic sound allowing you to appreciate the analog origins of the instruments; considering the year of its release (1998), this comes as no surprise. "Progression Towards Evil" may not bring anything groundbreaking to the table, but it refines the genre with remarkable consistency; there are no low points or tracks that I would skip.

One notable aspect of this album is the distinct, prominent, and clear bass sound. Alongside the drums, each bass note stands out, is audibly distinct, is one of the cleanest bass I've heard in years for a death metal band. This shines particularly when, in certain songs, they stop in the middle of the riff, letting the bass play alone for a few seconds with fast and rapid chops, simply beautiful. The drums are exceptional, with the double bass pedal working its magic, providing a relentless pulse from start to finish. It serves as the heartbeat of the entire album, adding a robust and solid rhythm you can't ignore.

On the other hand, the guitars find themselves slightly buried in the mix. However, the main riffs in all of them are very heavy and technical; they blend naturally with the background sounds. While not the fastest, they play a substantial role in enhancing the brutality and impact of the music, especially during the numerous breakdowns they have.

Vocally, the performance is untouchable, displaying precision and accuracy. The seamless combination of three growl types leaves no room for criticism. However, each song starts with a movie fragment that disrupts the environment a little. Despite some amusing moments, they are ultimately unnecessary; fortunately, they are brief and smoothly integrated into the music, so it's not a big deal.

The first track that immediately captured my attention was "Extermination of My Filthy Species". This song boasts a killer and intense riff with fast drums and chords, creating a brutal atmosphere that will undoubtedly captivate you throughout its four-minute duration, including the movie intro. The vocals, deep, brutal, with guttural grunts, perfectly complement the music; they merge really well with the instruments, showcasing a testament to experience and talent.

Lyrically, expect a blend of humorous gags, depravity, and sexual themes, making that about 50% of the content. The other half delves into gore, extermination, and death. Naturally, lyrical depth is not the primary focus here, as this is Skinless, not "Sesame Street".

In a flash, this record speeds along all tracks, and in a heartbeat, after just 30 minutes, the album concludes. Yet, I guarantee you'll find yourself hitting the replay button once again. Highly recommended, this album is a historical piece of pure art that deserves preservation for future generations as a benchmark for exceptionally crafted death metal.

Highlights:
"Confines of Human Flesh"
"Extermination of My Filthy Species"
"Cuntaminated"

The New York strain of death metal is one of my favourites thanks to the many brutal bastards that have put out excellent music over the years. Skinless is a pretty underrated NYDM band that leans on the brutal side and one whose discography is more or less consistently good. Their debut full-length, Progression Towards Evil, is an absolute classic of knuckle-dragging brutal death that pulls the listener in and beats their head to a pulp repeatedly before forcefully shoving their brain matter back inside through their rectum. I find one of Skinless’ positives in this album to be their tongue-in-cheek nature and that they never really take themselves too seriously. The samples used are just plain silly as well as their goofy, stupid lyrics. That doesn’t take anything away from the actual music, however, which I’ll be getting into now.

This album is largely groovy and chuggy which I enjoy, especially the first song, Confines of Human Flesh. Plain stupid heavy riffs that still sound somewhat technical. There are also some slam riffs present, for example in the album closer, Crispy Kids. Sherwood Webber’s gutturals are superb and just add to the disgusting heaviness of the music. Groove after groove is unleashed upon the listener’s ears with Webber’s growls killing any remaining brain cells left. The drums keep the momentum going perfectly with some blast beats thrown in periodically for good measure. I like the snare tone here as well, you can hear some hints of the pingy snare common in BDM nowadays. Lastly, the bass is pretty prominent as well, like in the song Bobbing for Heads. It’s not common that you find bass so high in the mix, but Skinless have done a good job here with it.

Progression Towards Evil is an all-around superb slab of brutality and heaviness in the classic NYDM vein. It’s no-frills, dumb, stupid, heavy brutal death that is sure to appeal to fans of the genre. Great debut from a great band.

Skinless, the NYDM band was originally formed in 1992 by Noah Carpenter. But over the span of six years the band didn't really do much except for recording a couple of demos with a very inconsistent and constantly changing lineup. But once they eventually managed to keep a stable and final lineup in 1998 with Sherwood Webber doing the vocals, Noah Carpenter being the guitarist, Joe Keyser playing bass, and Bob Beaulac at the drums they finally released their debut album "Progression Towards Evil"

But what made Skinless stick out compared to hundreds of other generic NYDM bands is that they had a sense of humor and didn't take themselves seriously at all. All nine tracks have a sample at the beginning, with eight of them being comedic and only one being more serious (which is the one in "Extermination of my Filthy Species").

Not only that, but the lyrics in most of the songs are just as wacky and over-the-top as the samples are. Two good examples are "Tampon Lollipops" which is about a janitor named Ralph who digs used tampons out of public bathroom trash cans and sucks on them, and "Scum Cookie" which is about a large group of people circle-jerking onto a cookie in the middle in which the last one to cum has to eat it! Disgusting and over-the-top, yet hilarious.

Anyways, let's get to the actual music!

"Progression Towards Evil" is for the most part your standard every-day NYDM album but with a hint of slam metal in some songs, with a production job that gives the album a nice and dark/intimidating atmosphere. The guitar tone is fantastic and spits out quality riff after riff which will have you moshing for most of the 34 minute duration of the album, and the bass is ACTUALLY AUDIBLE in the mix most of the time! As a big sucker for bass guitar that's a HUGE upside, although both the drumming and Sherwood Webber's vocals are rather average and quite standard for the genre, but they both fit with well enough with the album to not be too big of a deal.

As for what I don't like about the album... some of the songs sound the same and can blend into each other, the tracks "Milk and Innards" and "Fetus Goulash" are both completely forgettable.

Other than that though, this is a great NYDM album and would highly recommend it if you don't mind the cheesy samples and borderline silly lyrics.

The highlight tracks are definitely the first three on the album: "Confines of Human Flesh", "Extermination of my Filthy Species", and "Tampon Lollipops".

Not totally unlike my feelings towards Cephalic Carnage, I enjoy Skinless' early material quite a bit more than their vastly lauded latter era (though not quite with the bizarre rage I express over Cephalic Carnage). This, their first debut album, is strangely underappreciated, though not to the weird extent of the oft-benighted 'Foreshadowing Our Demise'. I'm not sure why it's unrecognized; it's oldschool New York death metal in the vein of a more measured, traditional death metal version of Dying Fetus with a lot of rolling grooves and occasional technical guitar parts, though without that bands Fleshgrind-type penchant for mechanical blasting. It's a good if unremarkable record, and I'm not sure why it doesn't get more attention.

Well, I probably answered my own question in that it's unremarkable. This is very typical NYDM all around, with the only thing setting it apart from the pack being a sense of humor (including some eye-rollingly cheesy samples). It's all the stranger since Skinless showed up pretty late to the game, popularizing themselves in the late '90s, so you'd think they'd know better than to repeat the standards of NYDM so literally. It's capable and engaging repetition, though, that manages to be relatively interesting despite lacking originality almost completely. Jungle Rot is a good reference, though Skinless never manages to live up to that band's sublime retardation. Riffs are mostly groovy chugs and there's really a near absence of blasting; you could almost draw a comparison to Six Feet Under in their most active moments. None of this is probably a ringing endorsement to most reading this, but to be frank, it's fairly stupid music for people who are stupid or at least like to pretend to be.

It's really one of those albums where enjoyment is purely based on whether you enjoy the style. Do you like churning riffs and grooves, ultra-low vocals, and music that doesn't take itself too seriously? Then you'll probably enjoy this. There's absolutely nothing that would ever sway a hardened death metal detractor, though, as it has no intention of expanding the paradigm of death metal in even the slightest way. I'd call it refreshingly honest if I felt more charitable. Really though the best I can say for it is that it's sort of NYDM's 'Formulas Fatal To The Flesh'; it probably proved to a lot of people that death metal was slowly starting to get back on its feet at the time of this release and encouraged people to go back to low growls about eating people.

Enjoy it for what it is: simple, catchy death metal with no particular goal apart from being exactly what it is. It's a success I guess because it's listenable and rather fun. I doubt I could hear this a hundred times and be as engaged, but after the past few, it's still pretty cool, which is all the longevity an album like this needs.

'Progression Towards Evil' by Skinless has every thing you could want in a death metal album, Deep grunts, technical riffs, pounding drums, and unfortunately spoken introductions. Yes, the intros to the songs are probably the stupidest ones I’ve ever heard. The worst intros are in ‘Scum Cookie’ and ‘Milk and Innards’. The intro on ‘Milk and Innards’ is 40 seconds long which is enough to make almost anyone press the skip button. However, aside from the dumb intros this album is very good. Once you are listening to the actual song, you will forget the intro completely.

The vocals are deep, brutal, guttural grunts that compliment the music perfectly. They are almost flawless, rarely are there any mistakes or signs of inexperience. The guitars are in the forefront of the music along with the vocals. The riffs are technical and very, very heavy. They are not as fast as they are in ‘From Sacrifice to Survival’ but they are still technical none the less. Simply put, it is not the best guitar playing, but it (along with the vocals) is what makes this music so brutal. The bass is barely if not at all comprehensible which is unfortunate since the bass could add to the heaviness. There are brief moments when the rest of the band has stopped in the middle of the song and the bass plays a riff for a couple of seconds so this should make up some for the bass being unheard most of the time. The drums are played very well. The double bass pedal is noticeable and relevant throughout the whole album. Now I’m no drummer, but I think I can hear a lot of blast beats throughout this album which sound good. The best drumming is in the song ‘Confines of Human Flesh’ which has fast double bass pedal and the snare and other drums are used a lot.

So, this album is pretty good, but the intros just kill it. If this album was re-released with all the intros taken out it would be worthy of a 99% review. If you find this album for cheap or better yet free buy it. But for now, if you have the money to buy a Skinless album I would recommend ‘Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead’ The guitar playing is much better on that album and all the instruments are mixed better. Not to mention that the intros on that album are way better.