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

Review by criscool623 on March 20, 2021.

Tankard is one of my favourite bands in general. I think that they have a great level as performers, composers, and in my humble opinion, they are way better than Sodom and Destruction; however, several factors impeded that they could reach the fame and appreciation that they deserved to have.

After their debut with Zombie Attack (an album that I did not want to review due to its more punk-oriented sound, as I am not a punk fan and it would have been unfair to judge it as a thrash metal release), the band started to work in a more aggressive sound, and the result was glorious; in fact, this was their first album with a genuine thrash metal sound.

First of all, I have to eulogize the composition of the songs; Tankard abandoned their tendency of writing simple songs with repetitive structures, riffs, and the same drum rhythm throughout the whole song. Here, the songs are more varied in this aspect, as they are more dynamic. We can find changing drums rhythms that make that the songs do not become something monotonous, bridges and interludes that make that every song have something different to offer and a vast variety of riffs, which has a remarkable influence of blues sound; thrash metal is that kind of gender that should overcome because of the originality of their riffs.

The music is savage, raw, it's pure anger, an ode to insanity; Gerre's voice is rougher than in its previous album, marking a clear evolution in his vocal style towards something more aggressive; Frank Thorwarth stands out improvising some bass lines in the album, giving more riches to the music; Oliver Werner is pretty standard playing the drums, but he's consistent and a good support for the band; Andy and Axel are good guitar players and they show off their (kind of limited) skills, offering short, but solid solos (although some licks are very memorable, like the first solos of 'For A Thousand Beers').

As I said before, every song has something different to offer, as the progressive parts of 'Don't Panic', the magic and epicity of 'For A Thousand Beers' (one of the best instrumental metal pieces of all), the aggressiveness of 'Total Addiction' or 'Traitor' and the funny and danceable introduction of the album's title track, you choose your favourite moment of the album.

I have not too much to say about the lyrics, as most of them are hilarious, obscene and beer-related, excepting 'Don't Panic', which is a little more serious, satirizing the war and other evils of the world.

Nonetheless, unfortunately, the album is not perfect, as it sins in something very important: the production. It is true that the music is powerful and full of adrenaline, but sometimes the sound is kind of dirty, and that makes that you don't know what notes the guitar players are playing, and thus, some riffs are unintelligible, as in 'Total Addiction' and 'For A Thousand Beers', but if you just want to listen to some raw music, this won't be a great problem for you.

This is the second strike of a band that is full of personality and style, and I totally recommend it if you want to listen to Tankard in some of the best moments of their career. It is a real shame that the band does not perform more songs from this album live apart from 'Chemical Invasion', but this album will stay in the history as one of the best (and most underrated) german thrash metal albums.

Rating: 9.7 out of 10

Review by Felix on March 20, 2021.

Twelve months after their minimally punk affected debut, Tankard returned with Chemical Invasion, a detonation of pure thrash metal. The compositions showed a higher degree of variety and complexity. In terms of musicianship, the dudes had reached the next tier. The fact that four of the musicians contributed at least one own composition underlined this development.

The excellent artwork presented a vile chemist who manipulated his beer in order to create a strange brew unscrupulously. This utterly unacceptable form of poisoning was too much for the defenders of the German purity law. Tankard raged against this kind of beer pollution and their title track was able to blow up the entire laboratory of the criminal scientist. The beginning of the song picked up the mood of "(Empty) Tankard", but this piece was evolving into a very intense and furious thrash metal grenade. Of course, a pinch of humour was not missing. Nevertheless, the song connected melody, density and speed in a very imposing way. Brutality and refinement were also expertly balanced. In my humble opinion, this ingenious number still belongs to their absolute classics.

Generally speaking, sheer fury characterized the majority of the songs. Straightforward outbursts like 'Farewell To A Slut' or 'Total Addiction' proved that Tankard had nothing lost of the juvenile spontaneity of their debut. Gerre's charismatic shouting as well as the powerful guitars and the thunderous rhythm section displayed an enormous joy of making music. As if that wasn't enough, Tankard also impressed with an almost progressive tendency. The monumental instrumental at the end of the A side surprised with a very unusual approach without appearing lightweight or inappropriate. 'Traitor', a further overlong song, proved their ability to write a thrilling piece of eight minutes length one more time. The song killed any kind of weariness in a matter of seconds because of its intensive and unstoppable riffing. Well accentuated background shouts increased the dynamism and the pressure of the song, while the high speed guitars performed rabid yet slightly technical solos one by one. The exact opposite of these bombastic songs was called 'Puke', an unswervingly hammering miniature track. As short as its title, it passed by in less than a minute while destroying everything that stood in its way. Fortunately, the mind-blowing mix of the album set all songs in the right light, irrespective of their individual configurations.

The lyrics expressed Tankard's weakness for beer and alcohol in general in several ways. But apart from that nonsensical poetry, the band also showed its political awareness ('Don't Panic'). Despite first appearances, this text did not come as a surprise, because 'Maniac Forces', already released on their debut, had also been slightly political. Well, we all know the omniscient eloquence of drunken people... Anyway, the lunatic chemist, probably a distant relative of Destruction's mad butcher, was grinning insidiously and I remember that I had pinned a poster with this artwork to the wall during the time of my military service. I cannot say that the motif pleased my first sergeant. But I guess my inoffensive action was better than starting another world war.

Rating: 9 out of 10