Skull Defekts – Peer Amid
Six years since first forming in Gothenburg, the Swedish quartet Skull Defekts are augmented, on this their 13th release to qualify as an album, by Daniel Higgs of long-standing Dischord artists Lungfish (check out their Talking Songs For Walking while you’re about it) on vocals. The album – Peer Amid – is quite a grower, as you’ll need a couple of listens to appreciate the various levels within the sounds created. Track two, ‘No More Always’, for example has, beneath the immediately obvious massive riffs, an Indian raga going on.
Skull Defekts - Peer Amid
Things get a bit more spaced out and trippy part way through ‘Silver River’ and then on into ‘In Majestic Drag’ (to the extent that Hawkwind spring to mind). The latter song soon darkens up nicely though with a jagged, repetitive guitar phrase maintaining an air of expectant menace along with bearly discernable vocal wailings in the background. As instrumentals go it maybe slightly overstays it’s welcome but you can’t deny that it’s affecting.
A funkier sound is employed on track six, ‘Fragrant Nimbus’, with Higgs bringing to mind Captain Beefheart as he by turns preaches from a distance before sidling right up to you and advising directly into your earhole. Dissolving into a wall of psychedelic feedback by the end this is one of the album’s highlight numbers.
‘What Knives, What Birds’ starts off in a pretty disconcerting vein with animal-like yelps and screeches before a martial sounding drumbeat begins to drive the song forwards. Generally this is another instrumental as the yelps etc are never replaced by anything approaching actual words and as such it can feel like a drag at times. Final song ‘Join The True’ is another real stand out track with Higgs coming across like some repetitive recruiter for an unnamed secret organisation. You’d probably take him at his word if he were.
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