Breathing the Fire

We Say...

Review by J. Edward Keyes

Make no mistake about it: Skeletonwitch are campy. Their name is campy: An ordinary skeleton? Just so-so. A Skeletonwitch? Infernal. The artwork is campy: the devil's skeleton, in a bubbling lava sea full of a bunch of other skeletons, holding up a pair of skulls. Even their song titles are campy: "Gorge Upon My Soul." "Longing for Domination." "The Despoiler of Human Life." It's like A Beginner's Guide to the Black Arts.

Which doesn't mean that Skeletonwitch is jokey. The 12 songs that comprise their third full-length are serious as Anton LaVey's eyebrows, endless white-hot combinations of thrash recklessness, punk rock fury and the moribund misery of black metal. There's no snark, no winking and, thank god, no irony, just a dozen blazing hellraisers that bridge the bleak abyss between hardcore and heathenism. It also seems to run, in spirit, exactly counter to its predecessor: if Beyond the Permafrost was all icy Nordic paganism, Fire is heated hatred from the bowels of Ohio. Vocalist Chance Garnett sings like someone cut out his larynx with a penknife: there's no tone, just gargle, a sickening series of belches and yawps as pitch-black as charred bones. It's barely there at all on "Blinding Black Rage," a filthy animalistic grunt clawing its way up from underneath a half-ton of tarry riffs. The whole record operates at warp speed, its endless hammering guitars bludgeoning with breathtaking velocity. And though racing is not the goal — plenty of the songs settle into a kind of steady, grimy lurch — when the group does push the needle deep into the red (as they do on the punky "Gorge Upon My Soul") the results are absolutely invigorating.

Indeed, it's guitarist (and sometime music journalist) Scott Hendrick who owns the bulk of Fire. He knits up songs like "The Despoiler of Human Life" with ringing, radiant riffs, peeling off a twinkling solo over the surge of sludge and lacing a single gleaming lead up the song's center. Tricks like this turn Skeletonwitch into gateway metal — hard rock for people who aren't sure if they like hard rock. "Released from the Catacombs" is powered by the kind of corkscrewing lead guitar typically found on much more polite records, looping over and over, insistent and anthemic, finally opening up into a gorgeous, pealing solo. It's only after a few listens that you catch what it is that Garnett is growling: "Dead and forgotten, the rotten now rise/ released from the catacombs, too horrible, alive/ hunger for more flesh, their only desire/ feed off the living, consume mortal life."

Seriously? You'd better believe it.