The Skull
For Those Which are Asleep
Tee Pee Records
2014
What I was afraid that would happen with Eric’s other band, Blackfinger, finally happened with The Skull. But let’s take things from the start and say that The Skull is the new band by singer Eric Wagner (ex-Trouble), drummer Jeff “Oly” Olson (ex-Trouble), bassist Ron Holzner (Ex-Trouble, Grave) and guitarists Lothar Keller (Divinity Compromised, Sacred Dawn) and Matt Goldsborough (ex- Pentagram).
Now whoever guesses the band’s music style will get a “super-duper candy”! Yeap, as you can imagine The Skull is Trouble no2… or shall I say a Trouble-clone, if that’s right since Eric and Jeff were Trouble’s original members. Anyhow, either way you see it Trouble and The Skull are two totally different bands but so much alike musically. Doom metal, with Christian lyrics or white metal if you prefer… for the 80s nostalgic ones. Moreover, for those who are aware of Trouble’s back-catalogue the name -The Skull- was taken from Trouble’s second and incredible eponymous album.
Musically The Skull, apart from being identical to Trouble, seem to lack inspiration and energy as they play like they are in auto-pilot. I think it’s too safe for such musicians to play that kind of music by following a specific doom metal formula and without even trying to offer anything different. The production is fine but it could have been slightly better too. At times I thought that I was listening to Trouble and that’s not a compliment. They had better start working things out with the other Trouble members and get all together in order to work hard and release a Trouble album which will be worthy of their great doom heritage…
Now whoever guesses the band’s music style will get a “super-duper candy”! Yeap, as you can imagine The Skull is Trouble no2… or shall I say a Trouble-clone, if that’s right since Eric and Jeff were Trouble’s original members. Anyhow, either way you see it Trouble and The Skull are two totally different bands but so much alike musically. Doom metal, with Christian lyrics or white metal if you prefer… for the 80s nostalgic ones. Moreover, for those who are aware of Trouble’s back-catalogue the name -The Skull- was taken from Trouble’s second and incredible eponymous album.
Musically The Skull, apart from being identical to Trouble, seem to lack inspiration and energy as they play like they are in auto-pilot. I think it’s too safe for such musicians to play that kind of music by following a specific doom metal formula and without even trying to offer anything different. The production is fine but it could have been slightly better too. At times I thought that I was listening to Trouble and that’s not a compliment. They had better start working things out with the other Trouble members and get all together in order to work hard and release a Trouble album which will be worthy of their great doom heritage…