Home of the Grave

Introduction

I am happy to announce that my exams went really well, considering I studied in a room which also had Battlefield 4 in it. After a little time off, I decided to continue reviewing Skull Collector’s catalog. Next up: ‘Home Of The Grave’.

‘Home Of The Grave’ is Skull Collector’s second full-length and was released two years after ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’. This is also the first Skull Collector album I bought (thank you ‘De Rots’ in Antwerp). While I love Skull Collector, I couldn’t start writing this review right of the bat when my exams ended: “One does not simply listen to a Skull Collector album.” I needed a clear head to take this album in. Listening to ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’ to detail was interesting and fun, but nevertheless a mind-splitting experience. Not much has changed since their debut album. All the elements that define the band are there. However, the production once again changes things up a bit. I’ll review the production by comparing it to the production of ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’.

Production

Overall, the production is much clearer. The guitars are more balanced and up front while the bass guitar remains in the background. Every component of the drums is more audible. The improved production doesn’t have a negative impact on the sheer brutality which is found on this record. It is still Skull Collector, we just don’t have to replay the same section for a large amount of time to pinpoint all the details. Of course, in Skull Collector’s terms, a cleaner production still sounds like a harvester shredding babies on a cloudless afternoon, but it allows the band to turn a few more heads than before. I’m proud to see the ‘Sevared Records’ logo printed on the back of the jewel case.

The guitars finally decided which ear to assault with non-stop riffing. On the previous record, the guitars were mixed in different ways depending on the song. ‘Home Of The Grave’, the mix is more consistent. The guitars are equally heard in the left and right ear and are more pronounced. The guitar tone has been improved a lot. The sound itself hasn’t changed much, but sounds thicker and more consistent. The guitars are found up front and constantly try to overwhelm the drums. On the previous record, the guitars didn’t stand out as much as on this one. However, they still don’t dominate. This makes for a surprisingly organic sound. One more important aspect of this improved guitar sound: those stop-start riffs… When you are into this kind of music, you unconditionally love stop-start riffing. How they impact the song depends on the guitar sound and the song structure. The guitar sound found on this record turns every stop-start moment into a face-melting experience which makes you hunger for more every time you hear them. Prime examples of such moments are found in ‘To End All Pleasures’.

The bass guitar no longer conquers the guitars when the record is played using a quality subwoofer. Is the bass still hitting as before you might ask: yes it is. It just has been mixed properly. Because the guitars are more prominent, the bass has a better overall role.

Of all the instruments, the drums have been improved the most. All components are balanced. The quality of the cymbals (especially the hi-hat and ride) is on par with the quality found on the previous record. However, the snare drum and bass drum have been given a gargantuan boost. The snare drum now has an actual purpose. It’s volume has been turned up to the point where it serves a purpose, but other than that there hasn’t been any adjustments. It basically sounds like an audible acoustic snare drum. This way it gives the songs an even more primordial feel. ‘Home Of The Grave’ features well-placed gravity beats. These really benefit from the way the snare drum sounds. To make my point, apparently the song ‘Home Of The Grave’ contains gravity beats. This song is originally found on the ‘And Then There Was…’ EP. I can’t say I actually heard those gravity beats while reviewing the EP. Of course, they might have been implemented later. The bass drum is one of the components which sets this record apart from Skull Collector’s previous efforts. It has received a huge boost. The bass drum is no longer translated as ‘background noise’. Every single beat can be heard, and the drummer apparently is aware of this. Because the drum patterns contain loads of double pedal bass drumming, the whole package receives a huge bass boost (further complemented by the more balanced bass guitar). The bass drum now contributes to the song structure. Just listen to ‘Inseminated by a Larvae Crotch’, thirty seconds in. In this song, the bass drum is responsible for the velocity of the song without sounding dull and overused.

Not much has changed in the vocal department. The feral grunts and screams return, but this time it seems like the grunts are more emphasized. ‘Home Of The Grave’ contains less screams. Overall, lower registers are favored. The vocals are still delivered with the same quality, although they vary less. This does not lower the quality of the record but it IS a missed opportunity to give it that much more ferocity. Occasionally, the drummer adds backing vocals. On the previous record, the volume of the backing vocals was high enough to provide a little extra value to the song. On ‘Home Of The Grave’, the volume of the backing vocals is too low. They might as well could have left them out. However, this is just a side note: I heard the backing vocals almost by accident so I might as well mention them.

Album abstract

I bought this record years ago. It didn’t appeal to me at all at the time. While thinking of this period, I came up with the idea of “One does not simply listen to a Skull Collector album.”. Years have passed and I opened my mind a lot more. Apparently, ‘Home Of The Grave’ wasn’t that unlistenable at all. The record has a better production than Skull Collector’s previous efforts. If you are familiar with these previous efforts, there is no reason for not picking up this one. Overall, this record features more structured songs. The improved production also makes the album sound more structured. The chaos is still there, but it is more accessible. Skull Collector’s second full-length offers eight songs of madness, chaos and death. Two of these songs (‘Home Of The Grave 1’ and ‘Home Of The Grave 2’) are re-recordings (originally found on the ‘And Then There Was…’ EP). The first (re-recorded) song has an intro added to it. All together, the album offers little over 26 minutes of raw brutal death metal. For me this is a little short. ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’ offered more material, but would also saturate the mind. ‘Home Of The Grave’, been more accessible, should have contained more material (especially considering 25% of the album consists of re-recordings). Nevertheless, if you are a fan of Skull Collector you should definitely buy this album. Although ‘Home Of The Grave’ is more structured, it will still require multiple listening sessions. Also, the songwriting is done very well. The songs do not get boring over time and have a lot to offer. As with Skull Collector’s previous releases, I never have the feeling of listening to stuff which has been done many times before.

Conclusion

I recommend this album to everyone who enjoys underground in-your-face brutal death metal without clichés. I’d also recommend listening to ‘Home Of The Grave’ before moving on to the more extreme ‘Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts’. The band obviously has evolved. More material on this release would have been nice, but I did enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed the previous releases. Keep up the good work guys. Of course, I do know about ‘Disfigured Insanity’, which will be reviewed in the near future, but for now go get ‘Home Of The Grave’ and become, once more, through depravity indulged by the Skull Collector.

Skull Collector represent everything that is great about death metal. Raw yet balanced production, a desire to play faster than is necessary, technical flourishes used to heighten but not define the music, intense, deadly, serious riffing and a sick, demented atmosphere. The are no gimmicks here, the vocalist does not have an unusual voice and the melodies haven't been influenced by Belgium folk music or whatever. Skull Collector play death metal honourably, you can't judge the music here based on how "different" or "visionary" it is, only on the quality of the music.

And the songwriting is excellent, of course. The album doesn't really build up as such, there are no highs or lows. After thirty seconds of an introduction the album blasts off at one hundred miles an hour and continues that way right until the album finishes. So if you need a lot of soft, melodic breaks in your death metal in order to feel comfortable listening to it, 'Home of the Grave' is certainly not for you. Infact, if you're not a death metal fan you'll probably find this album completely uninteresting as Skull Collector don't go out of their way to impress outsiders. They don't really make songy music, infact 'Home of the Grave' sounds more like it came out of South America than anywhere in Europe, least of all Belgium. They have the same level of chaos that a lot of Colombian bands have, with muddy riffs scattered all over the place and going in all different directions at once, yet played with great precision in that 'very technical yet somehow very sloppy' sort of way that you get in all great brutal death metal. It sounds like the band realised their limits as musicians and the speed at which they could play, and just decided to play everything a little bit faster anyway.

All of the trademarks found on the previous album are here; guttural vocals alternating every now and then with a higher-pitched growl, songs filled with a hundred chaotic riffs that you will not remember by the time the album finishes, an intense, blasting drum performance and an overall gritty, dirty yet perfectly suitable production job. However, on 'Depravity Indulged Through Fresh Corporal Parts' they never let up on the chaos at all, whereas it seems that on 'Home of the Grave' Skull Collector have tried ever so slightly to add a bit more cohesion. Some of the riffs in the opening track 'Home of the Grave' are actually quite melodic, and there is one peculiarly melodic section in 'Skullcollection' where the brutal riffing takes a backseat to an atmospheric plucked section, even though the drummer doesn't refrain from blasting away over the top. But in honesty, this doesn't really do much to affect the sheer brutality and chaos of this album, and songs like 'To End All Pleasures' do everything they can to avoid becoming a normal song, the only slightly memorable part being a technical flourish that last about two seconds and recurs every now and then.

If you're not in love with death metal, and I mean really in love with the actual sick, perverted, dirty, chaotic sound of it, there's no reason why you shouldn't love this brutal slab of intricate filth. But if you're only really into really melodic, easy to follow metal then you're probably find this unremarkable, if overwhelming. Skull Collector don't write songs, they write death metal, and I'm going to end this review on that line.

-Originally written for Archaic Magazine-

SKULL COLLECTOR is a rather unknown underground brutal death metal act from Belguim, that has been around since 1995, but have only released two albums (2007 and 2009) and an EP back in 2003. Either they don't spend very much time with their band and music, have had a lot of problems releasing or recording their material or are just damn right lazy. Whatever the cause may be, it is as indifferent as the levtover salad rotting in my room since last tuesday. They still manage to deliver the goods with their newest release "Home of the Grave", at the same time making a good joke off an old proverb. Now that's clever!

Normally, the specific genre known to many as "Brutal Death Metal" is full of very, very blunt death metal that goes on and on, reaching only the end of its own empty sack, then starting all over again. Now, SKULL COLLECTOR are one of those bands that do not sound bland or boring, but continue CANNIBAL CORPSE's proto-brutality ruthlessly, only better. While listening to the latter may cause serious stupidity, if you grab this CD, you may even find it funny at times. Most notably the waterted down melodic riffs are immediately crushed by grinding, heavy and extreme fast riffs, creating a very weird, almost satirical atmosphere. De facto, "brutal" Death Metal has always been a very satirical genre, since their disembowled , horrific and very graphic in detail music, has maintained a very comical status. The sound is mostly blurry and the vocals really sound like cookie monster's revenge. Luckily, 2009's "Home Of The Grave" has its roots in the classic Thrash/Death tradition, with a hint of grinding experience à la old-CARCASS. The chaotic assembly of song structures builds itself crudely to assault the listener's ears with ruthless brutality and fine aggression.

A feast for the old-school fans and an ear candy for anyone bald enough to enjoy extreme music at its finest level, SKULL COLLECTOR is one of Belgium's finest, when it comes to decomposed, disstructural madness, focusing heavily on how they do it, instead of what they do. without any remorse or care for casualties, this record crowns itself to an apparatus of ultimate destruction and deconstruction, but under no circumstances regression, like many other acts today. The technical level on which this is achieves if also remarkable, being sloppy, because of the production, but still standing tall and majestic. While song structures seem to override and overhaul themselves, they progress not in a linear manner, but burst into many directions, creating a tumult and devouring any at all mediocrity or colorless spectra. This is a must have in any Death Metal fan's collection (giving you are a collector, of course).