Beyond the Flesh

There was a time where gore, decay and violence were a staple of death metal and yet they weren't exaggerated to the point of being overtly cartoon-like. In much the same way that the classic horror films of the earlier 20th century had a certain subtlety to them that was completely lost on the modern slasher flick, the late 80s and early 90s were a time of development in which the human anatomy was subject to a more measured depiction, at least in retrospect. Perhaps that's the dilemma with many revivalist bands these days as they remember a style of music that was very dangerous and forward-looking in its day but now is considered quite safe and passe, they just can't quite claim the same sort of novelty that the onslaught of slam bands still cling to in spite of being on the scene for several years. Then again, it is still possible to strike fear and respect with a more archaic approach to horror, and in this regard the newly conceived Skeletal Remains has definitely struck a chord.

Largely the creature of guitarist and vocalist Chris Monroy, who was picked up by thrash revivalist act Fueled By Fire a year before birthing this project, this is a band that doesn't make any attempts at beating around the bush. Every single cliche pioneered between Possessed's "Seven Churches" and Benediction's "Transcend The Rubicon" is on full display here, presented in a manner that falls short of plagiarism, but definitely listens like it should have been released 20 years prior. The riff work is quite nimble in the quintessential post-Slayer sense, and translated into a slightly muddier yet still percussive character that was more a staple of the early 90s Swedish scene, that was itself a middle path between the Slayer infused Florida scene and the darker and murkier character of the later New York scene. There are occasional hints of early Entombed and Grave to be found here and there, though the execution and mannerisms of the riffs and vocals definitely fall more in line with the Florida scene.

One thing becomes immediately clear upon the opening mayhem that is "Extirpated Vitality", and that is that Monroy is a huge Chuck Schuldiner fan. While the production is a bit meatier and punchier, the songwriting approach is an absolute dead ringer for the thrashing, solo break heavy approach of "Scream Bloody Gore" and "Leprosy". Likewise, Monroy's agonizing wails perfectly match that raspy and hoarse character of Schuldiner and Tardy, though occasionally some deeper grunts that remind of Chris Barnes make their way into the mix. By and large this album functions in the paradigm that existed before Morbid Angel and Napalm Death started loading everything up with blast beats, yet the intro of the otherwise conservative "Anthropophagy" throws one in and inches ever so slightly towards that chaotic grinding character before settling into an upper mid-tempo cruise along the lines of a reaffirmation of the signature "Zombie Ritual" approach. But the heaviness and dissonance of this album is beyond question, as "Reconstructive Surgery" and the bass happy "Sub-Zero Termination" gallop and bludgeon their way through worlds of gory horror in an effortless fashion.

There's always been a highly conservative camp within the death metal field that didn't really accept the changes ushered in by Suffocation, Cryptopsy and Dying Fetus in the mid 1990s, and that is the primary target audience of "Beyond The Flesh". It has all the technical old school lead guitar gymnastics and busy riff work to rival Dark Angel on their best day, and the necessary level of putrid rage to move beyond what the Bay Area scene was doing during that era. It could be said that the reason why Schuldiner and company didn't write more albums like this is because they were too busy looking into the future to really savor the incredible present that they were in, as evidenced by the continual and seemingly rapid progression that eventually found him in the realm of progressive power metal. It's a bitter shame that he isn't here to give us one more go around at skeletons toasting in purple and scarlet garbs, but albums like this one come pretty close to filling that void. Enjoy the carnage while you're still undead.

I'm fairly particular with death metal, so it's great to see a new band appeal to me on every level. You can tell almost instantly that Skeletal Remains spent their time listening to the late eighties/early nineties releases from the likes of Gorguts, Pestilence, Death and Obituary prior to recording Beyond The Flesh. This sounds as though it could have legitimately come out around that time.

From the get go Skeletal Remains set out to flatten the listener, and they back it up with a heinous arsenal of virulent riffs, sickening rhythms and maniacal vocals in the vein of Martin Van Drunen or even early Chuck Schuldiner. Performances across the board are excellent, with a lot of energy bounding out of the speakers, and a perfect amount of technical prowess. If there's any slight issue I have with Beyond The Flesh, I'd have to say it's in the lead guitars. Don't get me wrong they're impressive, I've just found them to be a little too over-indulgent for the sound displayed across the album. I'd much rather have seen some prolonged riff sections in the middle of tracks, as these guys are seriously on the ball when it comes to that shit.

Largely coming off as the bastard child of Considered Dead and Consuming Impulse, this doesn't bring much in the way of originality to the table. What it does though is outright destroy you, and sometimes I've found that to trump originality. If you're interested in this particular style of purebred death metal then get this album now. Seriously recommended!

Originally written for http://www.metalcrypt.com

One morning I finally got the long-awaited vinyl edition of “Beyond the Flesh” by the Americans from Skeletal Remains and when I played it, immediately my first thoughts on the opening sounds were “damn, this really sounds like a long lost recording from the early '90s, and more so it sounds like it has been recorded at that damn Morrisound Studio!!!!”. Yeah man, I really do think so. Sound-wise, Skeletal Remains managed to get the material close to the Floridian classics of the early '90s such as “Impending Doom”, “The Dead Shall Inherit”, “Death Shall Rise”, and “Dreams of the Carrion Kind”, just to name those very few, and obviously I would be stupid if I didn’t like it. I love those old LPs and constantly have been listening to them for 20 years already. Surely it is just amazing that nowadays a new band, such as Skeletal Remains managed to recreate this feeling and the sound of those old LPs! For sure, there is nothing wrong in it if you ask me, especially as the music of those young American dudes (whose photo really reminds me the old Sepultura, hehe) is just excellent and when both things are so killer, all I can do is announce that here is one of the most awesome new death metal releases played in the old school way.

I actually think that Skeletal Remains is a bit different than most of the other current old-styled death metal bands. I mean, if you go through what is going on nowadays, you’ll see that 90% of them either sound like Dismember or Incantation with some taking influences from Asphyx or Autopsy. Meanwhile, not so many bands really sound like Skeletal Remains with inspiration taken from bands like Monstrosity, Cancer, Disincarnate, Obituary (“Cause of Death”), Pestilence (“Consuming Impulse”), Death (“Leprosy” and “Spiritual Healing”-era), Gutted, Resurrection, and Baphomet, so mainly the famous old Roadrunner Records roster. Skeletal Remains is really close to those bands. Sound and music-wise, they did their homework very well and the resemblance is so close! But I love it. I like the riffing so much and the production as well, and of course those killer vocals of Chris Monroy, who sounds a bit like a mix between Chuck Schuldiner, John Tardy, and Martin van Drunen.

So maniacs of the old Floridian scene (plus Pestilence!), get around and bang your heads as Skeletal Remains provides you with an album that you wanted to hear and that hasn’t been released for 12 years or more, as I guess this is more or less the last time something like this has been recorded. None of the old classic bands sound like that anymore; they don’t have the guts and passion for it and most of them don’t even exist, but who cares if Skeletal Remains is a band that we wanted to hear for so long?

This album truly sounds like a continuation of old Death albums, old Obituary, or the Disincarnate LP, rr whichever band I have mentioned above, and I don’t know if it is only me, but that Gorguts’ “Disincarnated” cover sounds so damn close to the original. Ha, I really, really like it a lot. None of the songs on “Beyond the Flesh” sound weak, and the whole time Skeletal Remains plays killer tunes and maaaaan, it is just wonderful to hear such tracks as “Extirpated Vitality”, “Reconstructive Surgery”, “Traumatic Existence”, and “Anthropophagy”.

The material is extremely tight, brutal, has a killer dark atmosphere, and the songwriting remains on the highest level all the way through. There’s just nothing bad I could say about “Beyond the Flesh”, and that is something that I am extremely happy about. It was worth waiting all those years to finally get such inspiring and excellent bands as Skeletal Remains and so many other killer young death metal bands. I only wish I could put my hands also on Skeletal Remains’ only demo, “Desolate Isolation”, but that seems almost impossible now.

Anyway, I strongly recommend this LP to all death maniacs out there. Buy it or die for it.

Standout tracks: “Extirpated Vitality”, “Reconstructive Surgery”, “Traumatic Existence”, “Anthropophagy”, and “Disincarnated”

Final rate: 90/100

Upon examining Skeletal Remains' artwork for their latest album, "Beyond The Flesh", I was struck by the relativity and poignancy of the symbolic image of men (or creatures) tearing themselves free from the bonds of their flesh. Certainly very fitting for a band called Skeletal Remains.

Tuning into the first track with its heavy and thick intro sound and crunching guitars, I immediately thought of Morbid Angel. Unsurprisingly, the band goes on to carry that thick sound of death throughout the album, never neglecting their old school influences. Vocalist Chris Monroy plunged me into a realm of nostalgia with a voice that sounds like it came off Death’s "Scream Bloody Gore" with that definite Chuck Schuldiner menacing tone. Monroy’s uncompromising growls and screams are full of anger, aggression, and some kind of novel evil, especially when his does his soon-to-be signature vomit-growl, although he can overdo it with nearly every track beginning with it.

The band definitely has an old school edge about them, with frantic riffing mirroring that of Death and Atheist. The overall dark, antagonistic sound of the album effectively carries through music that really sounds like what death metal should be. A lot of bands these days forget to incorporate that deathly sound and only manage to pull off hard riffing, fast drums, and brutal vocals with no real essence or depth. Skeletal Remains has demonstrated that they are not one of those bands. The most outstanding thing about this album, though, is the lead guitars. The solos are simply amazing and seem to have some sort of spell about them that is trance-inducing, most evidently heard in “Desolated Isolation” and “Reconstructive Surgery”. They are characteristically insanely fast and yet there is an affecting melody about them that works to set them apart from the plethora of emerging death metal bands today that tend to only focus on brutality, brutality, and more brutality.

The rhythm is definitely to be praised as well, with some brutal riffs and thunderous drums. Coupled with the menacing sounds from the bass, the band manages to execute an aggressive yet tasteful, brutal yet melodic, insane yet intelligent sound and image.

"Beyond The Flesh" is backed by a fittingly raw production that nicely settles it in the same league as that of Morbid Angel’s old material. In fact, it can be said that Skeletal Remains may soon see some immense success as their new album as a whole is already in the same league with old material from the heyday of '80s death. The similarities drawn between the band and Death, Atheist, and Morbid Angel all point to the potential hallowing of "Beyond The Flesh" as a death metal classic.

Skeletal Remains’ technicality and musicality is certainly very impressive and a listener will definitely be able to discern that this is a band that puts much thought into their music. Highly recommended to those seeking to have their ears bled out by a potential classic.

Originally written for http://www.metal-temple.com.

I should post up front that I've got an enormous bias for the brand of old school death metal Californians' Skeletal Remains pursue, with a large dusting of Floridian and Dutch influences that were important to me in my earliest teens when the genre had begun to branch away from thrash and become its own thing. Not only was the emergent genre so fresh, formidable and menacing at the time, but it was not shy on musicality, a plot point that is often lost upon the drudging derivatives rehashing all the old riffs with little ambition, or the endless pummeling present in the 'you mad bro?' niche of soulless brutality so prevalent over the course. So if that's your thing, and you're not so much into the older school sounds (at least of this variety), Beyond the Flesh might hold a more limited appeal, and I also won't be asking you to prom.

That said, if records like Consuming Impulse, Testimony of the Ancients, Cause of Death, Leprosy, Spiritual Healing, Considered Dead, Slumber of Sullen Eyes and The Ten Commandments are numbered among your personal favorites, then you'll instantly hook into what Skeletal Remains have successfully put together here. The vocals are straight up ghastly growls in a Martin Van Drunen style, with a bit of grisly excess redolent of John Tardy which renders them even more gruesome. The riffs are saturated with both steadier, morbid grooves and clinical death/thrash picking sequences which hearken back to the earlier Pestilence debut as well as Death's transition from 1987-89. Instead of just bland streams of muted notes, the progressions here actually feel dark and creepy ("Carrion Death"), reviving those reactions I once had to the band's influences. The production of the rhythm guitars to have a punchy but sodden aesthetic to it that reminded me of the Morrisound genre recordings of the earlier 90s, but this is counteracted by the well plotted lead work and melodies that constantly elevate the compositions above the level of just exhausted libations to death metal antiquity. Bass lines are copious, thickly embedded against the drums but often given a chance to wander away from the guitar passages and earn a paycheck unto themselves.

The drums are definitely simpler than what you'll hear in most modern tech/death, but he does a good job adding more fills to the efficient performance you'd have expected from Marco Foddis or Bill Andrews in 1988. Remember, this niche wasn't once all about double bass athletics or blasting away into boredom, but Beyond the Flesh is rhythmically overall a margin more contemporary than its forebears. Most importantly, this record delivers a great deal of variation from uptempo, swaggering force to more precision, surgical styled mute harmonies and other techniques that give the album an appropriately callous and inhuman feel to them. I won't promise that Skeletal Remains don't ride their influences a little too hard here, and they make no secret of what they're trying to achieve (their demo had a solid cover of "Chronic Infection" from Consuing Impulse, and this LP version of this debut delivers one for Gorguts "Disincarnated"). But by virtue of the fact that, to so many bands out there, a retrospective approach to death metal means 'Sweden 2.0' or a cavernous, reverb-soaked guttural colostomy, Beyond the Flesh feels somewhat like a fresh and practiced repurposing of a damn fine age to be into extreme metal.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com