乐队列表 Thrash Black Skeletal Augury Victory of the Holocaust

Being known for it's tight rules and heavy censorship over media, Skeletal Augury is one of the few China extreme metal bands that managed to catch my attention (besides Ritual Day, the band that appearead on Sam Dunn's Global Metal documentary and Tomb Sound, another black metal band). I chanced upon Skeletal Augury's Victory of the Holocaust on one of the metal blogs I frequented. They are also one of the bands featured on Metal Hammer's April 2010 issue.

On first listen, this band sounds highly influenced by early blackened thrash metal bands like Sabbat (Japan). Raw production quality (without compromising any of the instruments), fast and thrashy guitar riffing and drum beats, complete with shrieky black metal vocals.

Skeletal Augury's music and lyrics are highly influenced and derived from the horror genre. There are a lot of 80's movie-like spoken parts (with low vocals narrating a horror story), telling the story of zombies and vampires, yet constantly reminding listeners that "It's just a movie. It's just a movie".

While having spoken parts to let listeners know its influences are definitely innovative (though not the first of its kind), the band has incorporated so much spoken parts that it gets irritating at times, especially on 5 minute tracks where the listener has to go through approximately 2 minutes of spoken parts before getting to the music. However, while the wait can get irritating, it is definitely worth it with the music that comes after the spoken parts.

As I do not actually own the CD (all music were previewed online), I can't comment on the album art work and the actual physical product itself.

Highly recommended for fans of old school black/thrash metal bands like Sabbat.