Skin Chamber was a short-lived side-project by members of Controlled Bleeding that managed to release two albums in as many years. Their debut’s appropriate title – perhaps a reference to existence as a wound (Heidegger’s ideia of being “thrown in the world”), a violent ejection into being from which one never recovers (Otto Rank’s trauma of birth) – sets the tone for the musical nihilism that the band presents with admirable vigour and conviction throughout the entire journey.
As with most music tagged with the “industrial” descriptive, this straddles the line between the conventionally composed and the avant-garde spirited experiment towards a muscular and visceral pure sound aiming for the most immediacy possible. That said, one of the album’s most surprising attributes, for the listener accustomed with this type of music, might be the band’s surprisingly musical approach to the genre. Although the focus is mostly on atmosphere (particularly evident on longer pieces like “Slice of God”), many of the songs display a rare preoccupation with structure, including varying tempo and interplay between different riffs providing at least some of the songs’ drive and efficacy; all of this within the expected template of pounding drums underscoring a wash of distorted guitars and agonizingly expressive vocals.
The slower pieces resemble a more spacious and developed version of early Swans (the band’s declared main influence), wherein the crushing percussion is not left bare but fully fleshed-out by an entire ecosystem of synths, layers of grinding guitars, effects and occasional inhumanly distorted leads. This makes for interestingly dense, esoteric soundscapes seemingly as mysterious and deep as the contents of the invading subconsciousness. On the second half, other aesthetic elements less common for this genre are tastefully introduced, such as “noise” excursions, tribal drumming (“Horde”) and more prominent synths, like in the last track which mostly consists in harsh industrial percussion backing an epic and orchestral-sounding synth arrangement.
The despair and pain that powerfully animate the music are, true to metal fashion, not of an individual kind or referring to personal grievances, but rather of an impersonal, almost transcendental nature, allowing the music to strike deeper within the listener by appealing directly to the pure, undefined core of these emotions.
A personal favorite of mine, which I’d place on the same pantheon as Godflesh’s “Streetcleaner”, this underappreciated effort sadly didn’t receive nearly as much appraisal or attention as it should have, such that many might find my claim radical. I do insist, however, in urging the least familiar to thoroughly absorb what is presented here, in a work as perversely ritualistic as it is viscerally immediate, and my pick for the genre’s crowning achievement.
