Soulskinner

Don't get me wrong, I like old school death metal. I like new school death metal. Fleshcrawl seems to be the red-headed bastard child of both genres and manages sound like just another droning death metal band.

All the songs are all of a supersonic, blazing, mindblowing.......mid-tempo beat. Theres nothing wrong with mid-tempo, if you have more than just two riffs backing up the song. Soulskinner, however, is of the sadly quite popular death metal standard of song writing...handful of riffs, boatload of boring.

The vocals are basically what you would expect of any bargain bin death metal band, not very low, not very high....just that really bland middle area. The guitars are adequate, considering that they have mastered the art of playing the same rhythm for overlong periods. It takes a certain skill to make a decent riff sound boring after a while...it looks like someone was listening to their Pantera cds. The drums are there...doing stuff...I guess...I would say more about it, but this Herzog fellow doesn't really do anything inspired or outright horrible. Like I said, all of it is just bland.

When I first looked at the band photo, one of the guys reminded me of Val Kilmer...made me laugh a bit. For that they get 10 more points. That aside, this cd isn't worth the time.