Skineater

Skineater sound great, like brutal death metal. Here's the rub: this debut from this Swedish gathering of dudes from bands like Carnal Forge, Defleshed, Dark Funeral and In Thy Dreams is way more polite than you'd imagine. Sure, there are blast beats, but there are also tons of melody and the vocals live in that scratchy, screamy, neo-thrash kind of range. Sounds great, and it is, at times, but something — that clinical production, the feeling that you just want it to rip heads off when it merely maims — is makes it more frustrating than enjoyable. And the fact that the excellently titled "Made of Godsick" starts off like Morbid Angel sludge and then veers way too close to bouncy nu-metal territory is just evil, and not the kind of evil we go to death metal for. But, man, on the flip side, check out "Thousand Dead Faces" for a lesson on how melodic death metal should be done.