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Skumstrike — Deadly Intrusions (Caligari Records)

Deadly Intrusions by SKUMSTRIKE

Deadly Intrusions sounds like a slightly more euphemistic phrase for describing a home invasion, and the record is replete with songs that could provide a suitable soundtrack for an event that unpleasant: “Ritual Murder,” “Mental Wound Submission,” “Blood Red Vision.” And so on. If by this point, you’re flashing on the long, awful, VHS-mediated violation of the castle doctrine in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), you have some understanding of the aesthetic gestured toward on Skumstrike’s new LP. But while John McNaughton’s film is ruthlessly grimy in depicting its nihilism, and hence Henry… is unflaggingly miserable to watch, Skumstrike seems to be having a great time playing the tunes on Deadly Intrusion. Like most thrash metal — even of the blackened, crusty, fusty variety that Skumstrike makes — gonzo, white-knuckled energy is everything. It’s hard not to get swept up in that, exhilarated by its batshit vigor. Exhilaration and fear are ready collaborators. Exhilaration and misery?

That’s a brain-bending combination, hard to pull off musically, and it may not be what Skumstrike is attempting in the first place. We should note: all its crass slavering over scenarios of violence aside, Deadly Intrusions is a musically effective example of blackened thrash. Many of its songs do their overheated, blood-curdling thing with a winning sort of abandon. The band’s sound isn’t as raw and disturbed as Siege Column (which is probably a good thing) and isn’t as slick and shred-obsessed as Steel Bearing Hand (which may be too bad…). The Montreal-based duo works the terrain between those other two bands: grimy and grotty but at the same time somehow flashy. The performance of demented fury works itself into some fuming froths, but Skumstrike may be at their best when they settle into a gnarly riff. See the middle minutes of “Lobotomize,” which strut with snarling bravado.

So it’s a fun record, and it even cracks wise a time or two. Certainly it’s witty to end the record with “Nothing Is Final”; it’s a cover of a Poison Idea song, from that band’s past-ripened, post-Kings of Punk period. Poison Idea released the song on War All the Time, when the band’s appetite for the rock’n’roll party was beginning to outweigh the hardcore anger, and Pig Champion was using a stool. It’s also worth noting that Poison idea named that record for a relatively arch collection of Charles Bukowski poems — and underneath all the hardboiled hilarity, the dissipation of Pig and Bukowski got pretty miserable. No idea how tuned into all those culture signals Skumstrike might be, but the layers of irony are several and quite thick. Maybe the terrorizing endeavor announced in tracks like “Panic Obsession” or “Another Shot of Fear” is similarly ironical. If so, Skumstrike’s semiotics require some adjustment. If not, the band might need to rethink just how much mirth they want their music to convey.

Jonathan Shaw

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