Skeletonwitch

Live at The House of Blues

Hollywood, California

April 5th, 2012

Review and Photos by Travis Baumann

Skeletonwitch are a Metal band out of Ohio that play a fast past paced brand of Death Metal in terms of aggressive, growled vocals with guitar work bordering on Thrash, and Heavy Metal.

On this outing, they are the supporting act for the "North American Ritual Tour" with Nile and Black Dahlia being the direct support and headlining acts respectively.

I saw Skeletonwitch play four years prior when they were one of the selected acts to perform with Danzig's "Blackest of the Black" tour so I knew what to expect from these guys.

The band consists of two guitarist laying down the riffs, a bass player putting the low end into things, a drummer that smashes out rhythms that at times go into blast-beats and a large, imposing lead singer with a huge beard and long hair who snarls and growls his verse.

The music is surprisingly accessible aside from the singer's vocals, a lot of the material borders on good thrash metal.

The set opened with "Erased and Forgotten" off of their latest release "Forever Abomination". The crowd had already been worked up from "Hour of Penance" hailing from Italy so when Skeletonwitch began, the mosh pit formed instantly.

The lead singer is really animated, thrashing his long hair about and gesturing with his heavily tatooed arms. Their second song was "Submit to Suffering" off their previous release, "Breathing the Fire".

They played "Reduced to the Failure of Prayer" off of their latest release next, this is one of my favorite songs of theirs and it was cool seeing it live.

Continuing with material from the lastest offering they did "This Horrifying Force (The Desire to Kill)" and then followed up with the title song off one of their earliest recordings, "Beyond the Permafrost". This is the song and album that got me into them in the first place so I am glad the included it in the set list for tonight.

Returning to the newest relesase they did the brutal, "Of Ash and Torment" which follows suit with their subject matter, lying somewhere between purgatorial concepts, black magic and witchcraft, and death and destruction.

They would touch upon each major album once more before their set was done; they played "Crushed Beyond Dust" off of "Breathing the Fire" followed by "Shredding Sacred Flesh" off "Forever Abomination" and then finished off the set with "Within My Blood" off of "Beyond the Permafrost".

It was a good show, I enjoyed it more than the last time I saw them as they have had two additional albums released to draw from and have toured a lot since then.

Skeletonwitch was a great band to see immediately before the awesome Nile, laying down the brutal metal and keeping the crowd in the pit for their entire set.

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