SKULL FIST - Head Öf The Pack
November 14, 2011, 13 years ago
(Noise Art)
I kinda got excited about a trad metal resurgence about a year or two back, declaring it would be the next big thing after the thrash stuff died down. Uh, guess that never really took off, but there are bands out there flying the flag high (CAULDRON and EVIL SURVIVES immediately spring to mind, reinforcing my second cockamamie belief, that Canucks shall lead this charge). Enter Toronto’s SKULL FIST (I can imagine the band meeting where that name got decided upon now… lots of beer at that meeting), who made us all smirk and bang our drunken heads a bit with their Heavier Than Metal EP and are now back at it with this full-length. These guys almost get thrash with all that double bass playing and those insane lead lick riff things, but the balls/vice vox and staunchly metal lyrical themes keep it on the trad side of metal, all Metal Massacre Volume Two and Banzai bootlegs and a world where only dudes exist, all that good stuff. But these guys can write memorable songs and have tons of chops, making this a step above novelty and actually being, you know, good. If you like old-school metal with a fast polka-thrash touch, you’ll get a bang out of Skull Fist, who are the kind of band who can write a song called ‘No False Metal’ and make it sound totally reasonable and logical, thematically. So, they’re doing something right.
