Burning Oil

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Burning Oil album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 13   Total Length: 49:32

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Gloomy and Great

ChicagoRockDude

I remember hearing "The Wind Blows" late one night on a college radio station, and it scared the Hell out of me. What a classic album!

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Gloomy and Great

ChicagoRockDude

I remember hearing "The Wind Blows" late one night on a college radio station, and it scared the Hell out of me. What a classic album!

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Flawed but wonderful

n-rich

Skeletal Family's debut album needs to be viewed in its proper context. John Peel loved them, and so did I. Compared to legions of later copyists, the Skels (and XMal Deutschland) were pioneers of the new sound that the UK music papers were then still calling "Gothic Punk". While this album suffers from some variations in recording quality, there are still plenty of absolute belters to enjoy. "Ritual" is the darkest cut of the lot: play it loud and shiver!

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They Say All Music Guide

Skeletal Family’s first album is a sort of generic offering from the heyday of early- to mid-’80s British goth rock. It’s not as unrelentingly doomy as the starkest and most uncompromising stuff in the genre, and not as accessible to the pop audience as goth kingpins the Cure and Siouxsie & the Banshees. If you’re the kind that’s easily annoyed by 1980s goth-post-punk singers that tend to yelp at the end of their phrases, you’d better steer clear, since lead singer Anne Marie Hurst boasts one of the most exaggerated vocal tics of that kind in the form. Other trademarks of the style — as much post-punk as avowedly goth — are here: hurricane-like drumming, creepy echoing guitar lines, and lyrics that milk foreboding out of every situation and observation. The 2001 CD reissue on Anagram adds three bonus tracks of unspecified vintage and source. One of those, “The Night,” actually has the most memorable melody of any song on the disc. – Richie Unterberger

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