SKELETAL REMAINS- Fragments Of The Ageless

RELEASE YEAR: 2024

BAND URL: https://www.skeletal-remains.com/

Except for my brief church choir stint and occasional singing for and with children as an English teacher, I am not much of a musician, however, even I can still make the claim, as an over 30 year metal fan, that it seems not a complicated thing to make death metal. Because of that, it’s also very hard to make memorable death metal, music that gets stuck in my mind and won’t leave it even as I have loving conversations with close family members. Among those who succeeded are those of the so called Floridian Morrisound ore: Death, Morbid Angel, Obituary or Suffocation, of which the first on the list is almost certainly responsible for the creation of the melodic death genre (as well as technical and progressive death but that’s a subject for a different editorial). While there have been numerous bands who have tried to bring back the 80s and 90s old school, few sound as confident as the Los Angeles Californian act, Skeletal Remains, led by a man who, in many ways resembles the genius and modus operandi of that great fallen father of the genre Chuck Schuldiner, and nowhere is this more evident than on their 5th full length installment, Fragments Of The Ageless²⁰²⁴ released on March 8th via Century Media, a near masterpiece that’s easily the band’s magnum opus.

When the New York crossover thrash metallers, Demolition Hammer, released their second opus, Epidemic Of Violence¹⁹⁹², little did they know, that, 20 years later, a rising death metal giant, Anthropophagy, will use the lyrics of “Human Dissection” as an inspiration to change the name, after their first demo, Desolate Isolation²⁰¹¹, to Skeletal Remains, thus positioning founders Christian Monroy (guitars, vocals, bass), Mike De La O (guitars-2011) and Christian Reyes (drums-2014) (of whom Monroy and De La O remain to date , the latter returning in 2020) to unleash their debut full length, Beyond The Flesh²⁰¹² (via F.D.A. Records) upon the world. Beyond The Flesh was a good album that one bandcamp supporter rightly said you’d get “if Obituary and Death made a test tube baby in 1992 and incubated it until 2012” (plus “Traumatic Experience” opening riff was very close to Celtic Frost’s “Circle Of The Tyrants”, hopefully on purpose) but the songwriting was still second to phenomenal guitarwork while Condemned To Misery²⁰¹⁵ (also on F.D.A.) was a very good, slightly more varied, record with many, fairly original, memorable moments and Monroy’s leads on full display, however, it was still heavily influenced by Death’s Leprosy¹⁹⁸⁸, not quite yet in their own sauce. Not so with Devouring Mortality²⁰¹⁸ (the only one on Dark Descent Records) (which I am surprised no one reviewed here), a fantastic record (although the interlude 1:05 one riff track “Lifeless Manifestation” was totally superfluous as a separate entity), , full of very memorable moments, most notably in “Ripperology”, “Catastrophic Retribution”, “Grotesque Creation” and “Mortal Decimation”, as well as the title track, still very reminiscent of Leprosy and Spiritual Healing¹⁹⁹⁰ as well as early Pestilence however with their own style rapidly emerging. It was the first record for Century Media and the last where Monroy still sounded like a child of Chuck Schuldiner, John Tardy (Obituary) and Martin Van Drunen (Asphyx) love affair (forgive the metaphor), his vocals since more refined, a tad toned down to resemble Alexandre Kolesne Camargo (Krisiun). Enter The Entombment Of Chaos²⁰²⁰, an excellent record which did not have many melodic moments (beside the James Murphyeian leads) except for the ending of “Congregation Of Flesh” and the latter Deathly “Tombs Of Chaos” and “Unfurling The Casket”, so I was hoping they’d return to Devouring Mortality in songwriting which they did as the album is a mix of Entombment intensity and power and Devouring memorability (no pun intended), with many different influences but, if I had to pick one album to liken it to it would have to be Monstrosity’s fantastic The Passage Of Existence²⁰¹⁸.

The man behind the band’s success, Christian Monroy, is no Andy LaRocque (King Diamond, session for Death’s Individual Thought Patterns¹⁹⁹³) but you can’t tell with closed eyes. Every song on Fragments bears the mark of the former man’s guitar prowess but none as unbound as the perfect instrumental “…Evocation (The Rebirth)” with its apocalyptic “we’re harbingers of Armageddon but you like that” riffs and the magnificent leads evocative of those LaRocqueian comparisons. Having said that, were it all there was fantastic about the album I wouldn’t have anything more to write home about, however, the songwriting of Skeletal Remains combined with slightly progressive tendencies where, not dwelling too much on one riff, they change on a dime but expertly know when to linger for better memorability, and the fact that, as devastating as each track is, each is different, is where this Californian act fully earns the score I gave it.

True, the fantastic “Forever In Sufferance” seems to utilize the same technics and structure of Morbid Angelic “Rapture” and “Pain Divine”, while “Conquer The Devout” – “Lion’s Den”, whereas the bat out of hell on fire starter (thanks to fantastic performance of section Brian Rush <2022-bass> and drummer Pierce Williams the latter of whom will have left after the album), “Relentless Appetite”, harkens back to “Summoning Redemption” and “I”, the sinister shadows of both landmarks, Covenant¹⁹⁹³ and Gateways To Annihilation²⁰⁰⁰ laying heavily on The Ageless, but so what and who cares since Morbid Angel no longer makes them like that and likely never will again. I prefer to just enjoy the thrashy groovy hearkening back to Behemoth’s Demigod²⁰⁰⁵ with better riffs and songwriting while utilizing that same horrifying layered growl (Cybernetic Harvest) or smile upon the “Suicide Machine” Deathly stylings of “Void Of Despair” concluded with Sepulturic “Under The Siege” processed eerie vocals, the “Pimpf” Depeche Modeian instrumentalude “Ceremony Of Impiety”, or My Dying Brideian “The Poorest Walz” riff configured to serve an epic conclusion (Unmerciful), all littered by numerous (a first for the band) sudden thick groove riffs reminiscent of Morbid Angelic “God Of Emptiness” or “World Of S@#t (The Promised Land)” , simply taking it for what it is, a brilliantly constructed, fantastically performed with mind-blowing musicianship, expertly and monstrously produced (courtesy of Edge Of Sanity’s Dan Swäno) memorable old school death metal that honors the genre defining Pestilence’s Consvming Impvlse¹⁹⁸⁹, Death’s Human¹⁹⁹¹ or Suffocation’s Pierced From Within¹⁹⁹⁵ in addition to the aforementioned, admittedly ubiquitous Morbid Angel, while forging their own path of that ever elusive and highly demanding ore, death metal that gets better with repeated exposure and won’t leave your head alone until you feed it something more memorable.