Forgotten Gems: Skull-No bones about it

The years between 1989 and 1991 saw tons of hard rock bands puring out everywhere. Some were good and some were pure crap that had no reason being signed in the first place. You just knew with so many acts springing up dandelions in the spring that not all of them were going to make it. Many bands did one and done during this period. For a number of them that was a good thing for us music fans, but some good bands got passed over then too. Skull were the brain child of guitarist Bob Kulick, brother of Bruce and his credits include playing with Paul Stanley's solo band, WASP, Meatloaf, Balance and many other projects. Also in the band were drummer Bobby Rock (Nitro, VVI, Nelson and a pile of others), bassist Kjell Benner and vocalist Dennis St. James. This album came out in 1991 a year that saw grunge knocking out hard rock bands like this one and many others. I was expecting run of the mill hard rock from Skull, but instead was bowled over by some severely tight melodic metal along the lines of Dokken, Whitesnake and Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen. Singer Dennis St. James can just flat out sing with so much power. Every note he belts out is spot on. Kulick of course shines some ripping riffs and tasty solos, but he never showboats. Instead it's all geared just making the songs stronger and building them up. Benner and Rock make a solid rhythm section laying down a heavy background and guiding the pace. My favorite songs include the shredding "Breaking the chains", the tight grinding "I like my music loud", the bouncing "Little black book" and the instantly catchy "Livin on the edge". I unfortunately never heard this one back in the day, but only remember seeing a tiny ad for it probably in RIP magazine. The download is easy to fine so definitely track this one down and give it a listen.

Place of skulls-As a dog returns

2010


Guitarist/vocalist Victor Griffin is of course best known for his work in Pentagram. In recent years he has been at the helm of Place of skulls. For this effort he brings together the original Place of Skulls trio for. With Pentagram Griffin contributed some fantastic riffs and helped to carve the doom sound and influence many bands over the last twenty-five plus years. He still has that doom background in his sound, but he also obviously been drawn by or attracted to playing a more mellow sound this time around. I was actually somewhat shocked by how laid back several of the tracks. There are even a few ballads and the band seems comfortable with it. The musicianship is solid,but the ideas are merely decent and occasionally it gets bogged down upon itself. Griffin hits a few of the type of standard old style sludge/doom that you would expect from him. There are few guitarists who handle this style better than him, but there just isn't enough of it on this album for my liking. The lyrics are of the Christian variety as Victor is far from shy about singing out his words of praise. I am sure this is very much the album that Griffin and the rest of the band wanted to make, but it's all just a rather fair outing. I made it through and enjoyed some moment, but there certainly weren't enough memorable songs or even parts to make me want to return to it. Overall a slightly disappointing outing.