Skeletal Remains: Rapture of Cremation
In the mid-2010s, death metal played host to an explosion of exciting new talent. Like the retro-thrash boom a decade before, there was a new legion of bands dedicate to the old ways, bands harnessing a very old-school sound – both in terms of songwriting sensibilities and sonic production – that, cliche though it may sound, really reinvigorated a genre that was becoming a touch stale. But years before BLOOD INCANTATION, GATECREEPER and TOMB MOLD put their stamp on the genre, a kid called Chris Monroy started SKELETAL REMAINS, arguably one of a catalytic bands in the new wave of old-school death metal. Almost a decade on he remains the sole member of SKELETAL REMAINS to have played on every record, and he’s back with their fourth full-length offering, which has already seen the band reach a new level of success. This is The Entombment of Chaos.
“So far, we’ve had nothing but good responses. We’ve sold a shit load of material, vinyl, CDs, t-shirts – more already than any of our other records!” Monroy exclaims, already excited at the response The Entombment of Chaos has received over a month before its official release date. “I can’t wait for people to get a vibe about what the whole album is like. Illusive Divinity gave you a good introduction to the album as a whole, but obviously every song is different so I can’t wait to see what people think of the full record.”
Early opinions, particularly here at Distorted Sound HQ, show that The Entombment of Chaos in full slaps something silly. A blistering foray of brutalising old-school death metal in its purest form, everything from the riffs to the production to the aesthetics draw seamless parallels to the formative years of death metal as a genre. Though, of course, when you have death metal legends like Dan Swanö behind the mixing desk and Dan Seagrave putting brush to canvas for the cover art, it’s impossible to avoid garnering a sense of old-school legitimacy.
“With Swanö, we’re big fans of all the projects and bands he’s mixed and mastered. He really understands our band – I think that has to do with him being around for such a long time, particularly in our style of death metal. He just knows how to make SKELETAL REMAINS shine, he understands what we want and what we’re going for.” Monroy says on the band’s continued relationship with Swanö, while it’s clear it’s a real honour to be able to work with an artist of such legendary esteem as Seagrave.
“We’ve been wanting to work with Seagrave since our first record. All the bands we grew up listening to, all these bands we worship, a good number of them had Seagrave artwork. His art has always been around us, it was a dream come true for us to work with him on the last record, Devouring Mortality – and we were so satisfied we knew we had to work with him again.”
Interestingly, the artwork for The Entombment of Chaos came in a very different way from the norm. Generally, a band will go to an artist with a title, lyrics and a rough idea of how they want the cover to look. As Monroy explains, things were turned on their head for this record.
“We knew we wanted the tomb in the middle, and the creature next to it. We had some ideas, but we didn’t have any lyrics or anything for Seagrave to work with. In fact, you could say the title of the album and some of the lyrics were influenced by the artwork itself – we didn’t have the lyrics or a title until after the art came in.” Monroy explains. “When we first hit up Seagrave we did have a couple of ideas on how we wanted it to look, though. We sent him the ideas we had, some pictures, some of the older stuff he’d done – like we wanted something similar to the Considered Dead cover, by GORGUTS. It came in quite a different way from what we’re all used to, but I think it worked out for the best!”
Interestingly, not to detract from the insanely high quality of the original material on The Entombment of Chaos, one of the highlight moments of the record comes from the closing track – a cover of DISINCARNATE’s Stench of Paradise Burning. As Monroy explains, the cover was a long-time in the making.
“When we first started SKELETAL REMAINS, it wasn’t actually supposed to be a proper band – it was just an excuse to have some beers and play covers. A lot of the covers we were playing were from Dreams of a Carrion Kind, by DISINCARNATE.” Monroy explains.
“So this cover of Stench of Paradise Burning was supposed to originally be on our second record [Condemned to Misery], but we had to part ways with our drummer as he wasn’t up to par and we got our good friend Carlos Cruz [WARBRINGER] to fill in, but as it was a last minute thing we decided to drop the cover and just do the original songs. Then when we did Devouring Mortality the idea came back on the table but the drummer we used on that record was a little girl about things and didn’t want to take the time to learn the song, so we dropped it again. On this record the idea came back up and we were finally able to do it, it’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a very long time; paying respects to one of our favourite bands.”
They may have been raising hell before the old-school death metal revival was in full swing, and consequently have never been part of the movement dominated by the likes of GATECREEPER, BLOOD INCANTATION and NECROT. But make no mistake, SKELETAL REMAINS are one of the most exciting death metal bands of the modern era. Just watch out for that smell when they roll through town – that stench of a paradise burning.
The Entombment of Chaos is out now via Century Media Records.
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