New Skeletal Faces : "Until the Night"

I was not expecting this to be a thrashing hard-core album. Sure some of the death rock guitars tones are in place, but the vocals are screaming at you with more aggression to rally the rest of the band to fall in line behind them. This has more in common with old AFI than it does Night Sins.  By the time we get to "Ossuary Lust" things have really escalated into full-on thrashing out at you. I think this is great because not many darker bands like this rock the fuck out like these guys are doing.  It's like if the Exploited covered 45 Grave.

 From a production all the sounds you want from Death Rock are there they are just amped up. This is done in a very raw manner that does not get sloppy when the double bass really kicks in. This is not the kind of album I would expect from Peaceville. "Wombs" is more deliberate and rocks the fuck out. The way the chords ring is pretty effective. There is some tension to "Zeitgeist Suicide', but it works off a good dynamic expand and retract. "Pagan War" is more aggressive and the first song that strikes me as having a more black metal influence to it. The vocals do not feel as purposeful as some of the previous songs. 

"Enchantment of My Inner Coldness" is the first song that really truly embraces the goth side. The first riff is somewhat Cure-influenced.  "Raise the Dead" is driven by riffs that sound like they came from a Venom album, though the vocals shout the lyrics with a similar violence. I will give this album a 9.5, not only is it more in-your-face and hard-core than I was expecting, but the songwriting works with the blend of sounds they fused in a more organic manner, that plays to the originality infused into these old sounds. 

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