Skindred
Kill The Power
DoubleCross Records
Out Now
9 out of 10
If you’ve not heard of Skindred yet, you’ve proably been living in some kind of cave for the last few years. However, for the benefit of our hermit readers: Skindred realeased their last album Union Black in 2011 to much critical acclaim. Despite this, the welsh band seem to still not have quite conquered the mainstream. Sure the live reviews are always good, and quite rightly so, this is a band you don’t fuck with live. It can be guaranteed that they will lay waste to any venue, from tiny little sweatbox clubs, to the main stage at Download.
What Benji and co. have done on Kill The Power, is take everything positive about their previous releases and mix it up into one neat little package. The raw aggressive metal of Babylon, the massive choruses of Roots… and the more experimental dub and hip-hop elements which were abundant on Union Black can all be heard. This is a mission statement. This is a band saying “This is us, and if you don’t like it fuck you!”.
The album starts with the insanely catchy title track, a pretty typical Skindred song and one which will inevitably become a fixture of their live set. This along with ‘Ninja’ and ‘Proceed With Caution’ display the Welsh four piece’s continued passion for creating super heavy music infused with reggae and hip-hop. As always with The ‘Dred, there are the weirder songs, 3rd track ‘Playing With The Devil’ is largely dub based, yet still manages to sound heavy as fuck in a way that only Skindred seem able to pull off.
The band have also made no secret of their lofty intentions for this record. Sing along anthems like ‘We Live’ and ‘Saturday’ see them exploring new territory with relatively straight up rock songs, which wouldn’t sound out of place on mainstream radio. Album closer ‘More Fire’ provides the almost compulsory softer track, it’s surprisingly addictive vocal line will get stuck in your head for days.
Overall, Kill The Power seems to have all the right ingredients to finally propel Skindred to the dizzy hights of which they are most certainly deserving. But more importantly than that, they’ve accomplished this by staying true to their vision through years of relentless hard work. Get ready, because with tours booked and another main-stage slot booked at Donington, 2014 looks set to be the year of The ‘Dred!
Kill The Power is available to purchase now from iTunes, Amazon, HMV and all other good vendors of things a-musical.
Words: Alex Loach
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