Just in time for Halloween!

Skeletonwitch releases Breathing the Fire

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Album number five from Skeletonwitch is a technically complex and elaborate masterpiece of high-speed Death metal.  ‘Breathing the Fire’ is their first album in two years—quite a break after releasing an album a year from 2004 to 2007.

The downtime between albums was not spent too idly, however: between touring with Job For A Cowboy Amon Amarth and Mastodon, among other notables of Thrash and Black Metal and composing and recording the songs for ‘Breathing the Fire’ they have hardly been static.

Elaborate, tempo-changing high speed guitars are punctuated by mathematically precise speed-drumming.  The vocals span the gamut as well, alternating between a harsh, gurgling whisper and a demonic roar.  The lyrics are appropriately poetic and paint visceral images with their rhythm and vocalization.

Songs like “Released from the Catacombs” and “The Despoiler of Human Life” paint pictures of nightmarish elegance, far more disturbing than most of the shit that passes for “Monster” stories in Hollywood and Corporate Publishing these days.  This band is the real deal.  I’m not terribly blown away by the album art, having been raised on the complex and disconcerting album art of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Black Sabbath.  But other than that one issue, I cannot really find fault with this work.

There is something spellbinding about the manic energy of this album.  There’s something unpretentious and sincere about the music.  Chance, Nate, Scott, Evan and Derrick—whose names might sound more like those of obnoxious young Legacy Frat assholes than a group of beyond-past-perfect Metalheads—are a cohesive unit, a finely functioning machine crafting what is without hyperbole some of the best fucking Metal that I have heard—not just this year but this decade.  By no means do I recommend you take my word for it.  Go out and listen to ‘Breathing the Fire’ for yourselves.

Skeletonwitch: Breathing the Fire

Prosthetic

9.5/10