While it still imports a lot of the ballistic thrash of previous Protector recordings, A Shedding of Skin felt like a matured album risen up to meet the growingly extreme scene surrounding it. While this is still mostly thrash metal (almost all their catalogue is), this could certainly be heard as a more committed blend of that and its death metal offspring. A lot of vocal and guitar queues reminiscent of what Deicide, Cannibal Corpse and Sepultura were spitting out around the same time, and I also hear some parallels to Texans Devastation. The material is easily intense enough to have held the attention of extreme metal fans during that transition from 80s to 90s, and I can only attribute its lack of success to a lack of proper international distribution and the fact that thrash was just about to fall off a cliff outside of its primary practitioners.
Olly Wiebel, who had joined the band only recently for the Leviathan's Desire EP, had pretty much been given the reins here, performing everything other than the drums of Michael Hasse, for whom this would be the last Protector recording (he left afterwards and sadly passed away in 1994). To Wiebel's credit, he did not attempt to completely transform the band into his own image, but took the direction they were already headed with the newer EP material and made it angrier. Stylistically, this is nothing out of the ordinary for 1991, but it definitely feels evolved from its predecessors. The riffs hammering, sinister and have the most slicing distortion yet, with an array of faster, blasting riffs that alternate with your Exodus-style palm muted moshing fare. Wiebel's vocals are ghastly, with a protracted guttural that he can flesh out with more snarled lines or 'hwah' throat-clearings. They are a little blunt at times, and don't offer a lot of interesting syllabic patterns, but he can be forgiven for the amount of effort he's putting into everything else. I think the bass guitar also falls behind a little here, more than any prior offering, but the crunch of those riffs and the volatile, ripping leads compensate.
Lots of good tracks here, from "A Shedding of Skin" which sounds like a German response to something off The Bleeding, or "Doomed to Failure" which has a cool West Coast thrashing foundation reminiscent of Vio-Lence but with guttural vocals. "Whom Gods Destroy" has that cool lead snaking out against the caustic thrashing, and "Tantalus" is a pit crusher which manages to convey the doomed after-existence of its titular character. While consistent, A Shedding of Skin does follow in the band's legacy of providing enough variety that you won't grow bored, so the pacing is evenly distributed throughout, and the acoustic "Intro" and interlude "Necropolis" provide some breathing room, in particular the latter which its cool, synth-driven mystique and guitar effects that sound like scarabs or spiders creeping through a tomb. There is definitely a 'dryness' to the mix which resonates with other stuff by Harris Johns (who produced this with a few engineers), perhaps a similarity could be drawn to the masterwork Mallevs Maleficarvm by Pestilence, thought the composition and clinical feel here is nowhere near that level.
1991 was a strange year where a number of bands won huge success off albums I felt were somewhat lacking, whether for production or musical direction, and something like A Shedding of Skin appealed to me much more than Blessed Are the Sick or Arise. Although I can appreciate and even concur why some fans' hearts would remain back with the earlier Martin Missy era, Misanthropy and Golem having a sense of timelessness about them, this one is actually my favorite full-length of that earlier Protector run. It doesn't build up anything new upon the components which influenced it, but it still feels vile and aggressive even today, and some of the songs just resonate with me the most. Add that it's the unlikely product of just the drummer and the new guy who had to deliver on several instruments, and I think it punched well above its potential.
Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (Strip away the garments of sin)
No comments:
Post a Comment