If Death, Obituary, Bolt Thrower, Autopsy, Morbid Angel and early Pestilence were to create the most authentic and natural sounding style of old school death metal it would be California’s Skeletal Remains. In 2018, I discovered this band after listening to their third full-length through Dark Descent Records titled Devouring Mortality and it was one of the absolute greatest releases of 2018 and became a certified banger front to back. Now released under a new label through Century Media Records, The Entombment Of Chaos is exactly where Devouring Mortality left off but with some very interesting leads and hooks that kept bringing me back listening to this godly album. This is without question one of the best old school death metal albums in the past decade maybe even longer.
So what does this new chapter mark for these musicians? Well, stylistically they don’t just bring innovative components of old school death metal but this album has a wide combination of Death (“Spiritual Healing” especially), Obituary’s “Cause of Death”, Disincarnate’s “Dreams of the Carrion Kind”, Pestilence’s “Consuming Impulse”, Solstice’s “Solstice” and few more similar records fall onto the category. Every track here is technical, but memorable and slightly melodic death metal, with so many impressive leads spread all over the album from beginning to end. Skeletal Remains in my opinion composed songs, which really could rival all the classic tracks from “Spiritual Healing”, “Cause of Death”, “Dreams of the Carrion Kind” or “Death Shall Rise and the whole best part about this album is they’ve been hugely influenced by older death metal band’s throughout the mid 80’s through the early to mid 90’s.
The record also has originality written all over it and it’s a phenomenal listening experience since these Californian’s composed death metal to pay homage for their wide variations for extreme music. Skeletal Remains is a bit different than most of the other current old-styled death metal bands with inspiration taken from bands like Gutted, Resurrection, and Baphomet, so mainly the famous old Roadrunner Records roster back in the day. The material is extremely tight, brutal, has a killer dark atmosphere, and the songwriting remains on the highest level all the way throughout the album’s presentation. So if you love your death metal old school, gory, violent and massacred Skeletal Remains’s The Entombment Of Chaos is definitely up your alley.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
