Review by Felix on November 19, 2020.

Sometimes it’s a tough job to write a review, because one is confronted with an album that simply does not work. Although the band uses all elements it needs to pen a satisfying work, something is missing. Necronomicon’s Apocalyptic Nightmare is one of those outputs. Yes, there are rasping guitars and a proper degree of velocity. Moreover, I cannot identify technical flaws (don’t expect any form of Sodom-esque or old Kreator-like rumbling) and the lead vocalist does not do a bad job, although he lacks individuality and sounds like the little brother of Destruction’s Schmier.

The problem is that all these details have no relevance whenever a band is not able to put them together cleverly and make a good song out of it. Apocalyptic Nightmare was the second full-length of the combo, but Necronomicon’s song-writing skills were still alarmingly weak. All tracks pass by without triggering the wish to listen to them again. Already the opener simply forgets to draw the listener into the album. It’s not the biggest pain in the ass to consume the seven songs, by far not. But it’s shocking that an album full of riffs and high speed rhythms can leave such a feeble overall impression. Okay, the chorus of 'In Memory' with its slightly hardcore-influenced background shouts keeps sticking in the ear, but that’s all and that’s not much, to express it politely.

Necronomicon never stood on the sunny side of life. Mostly they received negative reviews in the German media of the eighties and not at least because of this fact I felt certain sympathy for them. Nonetheless, now I must admit that these reviews did not happen by chance. The four dudes string together a million riffs, but at the end of the day, everything is going nowhere. Obviously, the band sits between the two stools. On the one hand, their material is too straight to fascinate those maniacs who love it to listen to progressive and / or academic sounds. On the other hand, the songs do not have the power to make the underground smile sadistically. The integrity of the line-up is beyond doubt, but that’s not enough to catch the attention of the listener for a long time. The same goes for the production. I cannot say anything bad about it, but its quality doesn’t matter in view of the deficiencies of the songs.

Probably the quartet became the victim of its own ambitions. The overlong songs paint a heterogeneous picture and maybe the stupid artwork mirrors the compositional flaws involuntarily. What does the magician do with an impaled head? Why is this scene witnessed by an oversized skull? In short, the cover is ridiculous. And although this is not the word I want to use to describe the seven songs of Apocalyptic Nightmare, I understand very well why this work fell on deaf ears.

Rating: 3.8 out of 10

Review by Adam M on June 6, 2018.

Skinless perform a very brutal form of death metal that has a pummelng effect on you.  The riffs are straight out battery and make for a very brutal offering.  This music has a scathing effect that Carcass circa Necroticism has, but has a more stripped down approach.  The beating that one gets from the music is massive. 

The guitars bring a wall of pummeling tactics to the listener.  The drums back up the music to great effect and make it even more brutal. When all instruments are considered a pretty punishing offering can be found.  Now this music doesn’t have the most versatility and this is a flaw with the recording.  It could be more dynamic, but the music here certainly makes up for that with the brutality level taken to the max.  There is a more heavy flair to the songs than what Exhumed uses and it’s difficult to find a comparison point because the music Is somewhat unique.  The intro to Reversal of Fortune puts some variation to the disc with its more subtle opening, but this is some of the only respite one can find here.  Otherwise, there is a relentless flavour to the songs that brings about headbanging from the listener.  Is it a postiive characteristic to make such a brutal recording?  Well, it certainly causes an impact to be felt even if the music could be more varied. 

Skinless stick to their guns and bring forth the most savage recording possible.  Though this year’s death metal release from Alkaloid provides an interesting counterpoint to the proceedings here, it is still nice to get such a brutal and vicious recording.  It’ll be interesting to see how the band follows things up and if they crank the extremity up even more.  As it stands, Savagery is a fun and hard hitting affair. 

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Review by Alex on May 17, 2018.

New York’s brutal death metal band Skinless plays Savagery with traces of thrash metal, crossover thrash and doom metal. 

I was very mindless of the music on the first half of Savagery however, with the introduction of “Exacting Revenge”, things changed for Savagery positively. Though the first 4 tracks were diverse due to the multiple styles incorporated, they did feel like they were lacking in the attention department; they never stood apart from each other; nothing on those tracks were revealing in a good fashion. They held tightly to repetition and filler. The opening song being the title track sounded too much like crossover thrash; even some of the vocals went with that approach, not that there’s anything wrong with trying different formulas and blends, it was just added too early on in the music. The songs following it would repeat the mistake of straying away from the “brutal” aspect in pursuit of variance. I would have preferred to hear the experimentation more towards the middle section of Savagery. Then comes the interlude in the form of a 2 minute instrumental track called “Reversal of Fortune”. I think Skinless meant to name it Retraction of Misguided Concepts or better yet Back to the Drawing Board, because that’s exactly where they went with the following tracks.

The latter portion of Savagery possesses the………, well……, “savagery” so to speak. "Exacting Revenge" is the kind of track Skinless should have started the album with. It has all the root elements of brutal death metal such as the fast bulldozer drum pounding, consistently guttural vocals and untamed riffing. Savagery then takes a short break from the momentum via a doomy track in the form of “Medieval”, it does quicken in pace but remains mostly mid-paced. The following tracks build on the success of the beginning of the latter half of the album. They even manage to correct the mistakes made on the opening tracks of the album. Skinless revisited the experiments without losing the space to project the brutal death metal elements of the album. 

The production of this album is excellent and is a worthy complement to the effort of the musicians playing. Savagery is an album that will take some getting used to via repetitive listens; it fails at the beginning then triumph’s towards the end. 

Rating: 7.8 out of 10