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SCALPEL
Sorrow And Skin

Sevared (2013)
Rating: 7.5/10

So, straight from the bowels of Boston, Massachusetts come death / grindcore lunatics Scalpel (cool name!) with their agitated and yet accessible brand of extreme metal where, for me, the guitars are the king of all. Scalpel – formed in 2008 – have finally gotten round to recording and releasing their debut album, and Sorrow And Skin is as brutal as I had hoped.

Ten tracks of the unspeakable make for quite a refreshing listen, the quartet opting for destructive percussive death metal which is home to some – dare I say it – intriguing melody.

Now, that’s not to say that these guys are an experimental extreme metal act. Fans of gore-soaked grindcore will revel in the opening barrage of ‘Ripe’, but Scalpel set themselves apart from the horde of undead by focusing on interesting bass lines, staggering drum patterns and above all some unpredictable old school soloing – classic, fiery metal at its rotten core, the old school soloing somehow slots in nicely alongside the more monstrous structures.

Of course, a track like ‘Gutmulch’ seems to only exist as a way of tearing off the ears of the listener, what with those hyper drums and wayward riffs. Couple this extremity with the no frills guttural growls, and it’s death / grind at its finest.

One can’t help but applaud the juddering techniques of ‘The Woodsman’ or the sinister bass toil of ‘Skullscraper’, however, which oozes itself out of the grave like some doom-laden corpse eager for one last crawl into the night. ‘Skullscraper’ is Scalpel at their best; a down-tuned, infected piece of carrion that ever so slowly builds its pace, it nonetheless always remains as catchy as hell, with the drums turning into a blurry patter and the twisted guitars sawing the flesh like an out of control buzz-saw.

The intensity throughout Sorrow And Skin will please the cannibalistic crowd of grindcore freaks, but listen carefully to those guitars and you’ll hear some old school thrash mayhem and doomy gore metal eager to raise its decomposing head above the mire of speed.

The huge positive here is that the combo aren’t merely interested in battering its audience to death, because in spite of that gruelling piranha frenzy at times – ‘Sentinels Of Severed Flesh’, for example – there is still an ability to vary the volatility, resulting in some effective tracks that show a band with great potential and maturity.

‘Mincemaster’ and, even more so, the title track are fine examples of a band easily able to create gloomy atmospherics. This arrives before the outfit resort to their effortless noise fests, the climax being the short but foetid agony of ‘Unspeakable’, which pretty much sums up the quality of Scalpel.

I’m of the opinion that these gore-obsessed musicians are the surprise package of the genre. With a few tweaks here and there and more occasions to ponder melody, the next opus could well be a little shop of horrors worth visiting a number of occasions.

Neil Arnold

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