Daylight Mutilation LP
Funky Noise, 2023

After coming across Burnt Skull’s 2014 album Sewer Birth, the band had a place on my mental playlist for quite some time before they seemed to disappear for nearly a decade. That is until this gnarly 10-song heap popped up on Bandcamp and properly got my attention again with Unsane-style blunt force trauma riffing, Pain Teens-style psychotic sample swirls, and the warbling, brutalist efficiency of Drunks With Guns-style song structures. What Burnt Skull brings to the table is whole new level of misanthropy with sick, in-the-pocket drums that positively lock in to the bludgeoning riff fest and hissing black metal vocals ala Darkthrone that are buried deep in the mix. In the tradition of other unconventional Texas freakshows like the Butthole Surfers, Stick Men With Ray Guns, Scratch Acid, Rusted Shut, Shit and Shine, Sexpill, and others who marched, stumbled or ran to the beat of their own drum, Burnt Skull aren’t imitators or trend hoppers. They’ve got a unique sound that’s all their own and they’ve perfected it over a decade, delivering an staggering deluge of sound that’s hard to believe could come from only two people. And even within a genre-defying category of noisy rock music they’re able to add some songwriting flourishes that keep things interesting, such as the sweetly-buried melody in songs like “Knife In Your Heart”, or the stutterstep quasi-industrial rhythm of “Entering Fire” that might be a better take on what Ministry was doing on The Land of Rape and Honey. Like any great band, Burnt Skull aren’t just gathering a bunch of reference points to their influences, they’re taking those elements and brewing up their very own potent form of music. Daylight Mutation will leave its mark for decades to come.