SKUMSTRIKE
SKUMSTRIKE – “Deadly Intrusions”
by Thor
The dastardly duo from Quebec that calls itself SKUMSTRIKE has released its debut full-length album called “Dead Intrusions” and—holy shit—it RIPS!
These guys market themselves as black/thrash, which is apt, but to this reviewer, it’s as if CELTIC FROST decided they were a d-beat band. Whatever thought that evokes in your head, rest assured, the reality of SKUMSTRIKE’s approach to music is excellent and furiously unrelenting. The result is an absolute pummeling delivered by way of sonic contrasts. It’s new and familiar. It’s fast and weighty. It’s filthy and precise.
“Deadly Intrusions” is essentially a German-style thrash album hijacked by the extreme reaches of hardcore punk, d-beat, and power violence. The whole thing is painted with the same decrepit brush as early MAYHEM and DARKTHRONE for that blown out, tar-black aesthetic and topped off with a similar vocal approach. It’s as if the band took just the best attributes of metal and punk’s fastest and most abrasive subgenres and distilled them into a brew that somehow needs little moderation. It makes for an album free of any weak spots. And the final salvo is a cover of POISON IDEA’s “Nothing is Final”!
Fans of hardcore punk, thrash metal, black metal, and all their tributaries will love SKUMSTRIKE’s malignant brute of a debut, “Deadly Intrusions”.