SKUMSTRIKE are streaming their second album in full. "Flawless Intrigue From Hell" is playing in its entirety on the New Wave Of Old School Thrash Metal YouTube channel ahead of its international release tomorrow, September 25, via Dying Victims Productions.
The Montreal power trio deal in speed metal with the edges left sharp — thrash and death metal pressure applied to a form that has never especially wanted refining. The touchstones are audible and unfashionable in the best way: the wild, lurching fury of Japan's SABBAT, the abandon of early SLAYER, the cold blunt force of BATHORY. Across ten tracks the album alternates between outright redline rippers and slower, heavier dirges, which is the difference between a band that plays fast and a band that knows what fast is worth next to.
It is a considerable step up from where they started. "Deadly Intrusions", the 2022 debut, arrived at full pace and largely stayed there. "Flawless Intrigue From Hell" is a wider record and a meaner one, built around themes of betrayal and double-dealing — the title is not decorative.
The album was recorded by Patrick McDowell, the mastermind behind Montreal black metal band SPECTRAL WOUND, in the aftermath of SKUMSTRIKE's first European tour. That timing shows: it has the particular tightness of a band that has just spent weeks playing the material to rooms full of strangers rather than working it out in a rehearsal space. It is also their first release for Dying Victims Productions, the German label that has spent the last decade quietly assembling one of the better rosters in traditional and speed metal.
It closes with a cover of ABIGAIL's "Satanik Metal Fucking Hell", which is about as direct a statement of allegiance as a Canadian speed metal band can make — the Japanese black/thrash veterans have been operating on exactly this frequency since 1992.
The cover art comes from Chris Kiesling of Misanthropic-Art, whose skeletal work has fronted records by MORTUARY DRAPE, HOODED MENACE and GRAVE INFESTATION.
"Flawless Intrigue From Hell" track listing:
- Death Reckoning
- Venomous Spiral
- Braise The Dead
- Mastery Of Sin
- Flawless Intrigue From Hell
- Endless Warlust
- Ironclad Fate
- Glacial Winds Of Perdition
- Sacred Fornication
- Satanik Metal Fucking Hell (ABIGAIL cover)