Skeletons : " Tripping At the Madhouse Gates"

When I read you are covering Life of Agony and Agents of Oblivion you get my attention. Once you have it you better deliver. Sure there is some Acid Bath worship going on here. The production wise this translates  in a somewhat muddy manner. The over blown blown out speakers that chugging on "Brain Sick" could benefit from having real drums driving it a little harder. There are some good ideas. I like the effects the vocals are drenched in. The problem is Life of Agony and Acid Bath are two of my favorite bands  this side of Type O Negative from the 90's , so if I am not all over a combination of the two then something is wrong some where. Most of the time the problem is the production and the drum programming.

These sound like a lot of the demos I made on my drummers four track when I was 19. The guitar is really fuzzed out and the vocals sound like they are being sun into a tine can. Dominic Goulding who is Skeletons, could benefit in finding himself an honest to Satan drummer. Other wise he is a pretty decent singer. His harsh voice succeeds in sounding like Sammy . In other news in case Dominic doesn't know already.. Acid Bath is getting back together without Dax Riggs, and the drummer has been reaching out to Slipknot's Corey Talyor, which could be a travesty waiting to happen. The album kind of loses me until "Problem of Hell" kicks in. The vocals take on a good drugged slur. The guitar chugs more like old Life Of Agony than the dirty sludge of Acid Bath.

Goulding manages to rip off two Acid Bath songs at once and ends up sounding like Candle Box. It seems like he needs to step away from "When the Kite String Pops" and listen to some blues....or even the Doors would work, that way it would give these songs a little more depth.  The guitar gets good and pumped up on "Meat Wagon". The opening riff is the first time the album really finds it's own identity. When he tries to get heavier it sounds a little awkward like suburban death metal. There is a little Black Sabbath thrown in as "Two-Headed Girl" sounds a lot like "Hole in the Sky" . Of course Pantera is a far cry from some of the swampy ground Acid Bath once tread and some moments of "Death Parade" have a Down/ Pantera type feel. There is a really good heavy riff at the beginning of "Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea" , the production seems to have a meltdown at the same time the song gets good.

He is still learning what manner of heavy works best for him and the answer lies pretty close to "Incubation Manifesto" that almost delves in a Lord Mantis direction.  This works better than the "Dead Girl" like balladry of " White Room" .  The production is a huge problem and wearing your influences on your sleeve works better in some cases than it does others. I'll round this up to a 5.