Skeletor | Bastards of the Universe (EP review) ★★★☆☆

Put death metal and thrash metal in a blender and you’ll get the sound of Skeletor. This Dutch band is founded in 2004 and now released their new EP ‘Bastards of the Universe’ on May 23th, 2015. It might be that this band name and album title sounds familiar to you: they are influenced by 80s hero He-Man!

Bastards of the Universe: an EP with a lot of differences
The album starts with the title song ‘Bastards of the Universe’. It’s an up-tempo song, with drums that kind of dominates the song. Even though you can hear the drums very clear, the other instruments are also well hearable. The melody stays the same the whole time, changes are made by the vocals. After that the EP continues with ‘Humans from the Planet Earth’. In this song the guitar makes a different in melody. This makes it easier and more pleasant to listen to than the previous one. A typical thrash sound fills the room and the vocals alternate between grunt and scream. Definitely a song to listen to more often. A few songs later we hear ‘Left Behind to Rot’, a song we can truly hear the death metal in. From the beginning the vocals are hoarse and pretty low. Till now it’s the best song of the whole EP and I want to listen to it again. Another song I like is the next one: ‘Enter the Dragon’. It’s not the typical thrash or death metal sound we expect of the band and I guess that’s what I like about it. The unexpected and unknown ‘talent’ of the band. In my opinion the band shows they can also make the oldschool metal.

Bastards of the Universe ends with ‘The Clit Commander’. It’s a more up-tempo song than the previous, but still the oldschool sound remains. They alternate in melody pretty good and make it a song worth listening to. They also play with soundeffects. At one point it looks like a woman getting an orgasm. This makes the song different than other songs and it keeps it interesting.

Conclusion
It’s an EP with a lot of differences. The band shows us they can make several types of metal, like thrash, death and the oldschool metal. One disadvantage was the start of the EP. In my eyes, it started a bit safe. But in the other songs you could hear that the band has more confidence and the songs got stronger every time.

Score: 7.8/10 ★★★☆☆

Tracklist
1. Bastards of the Universe
2. Humans from the Planet Earth
3. Skeletor
4. Stomp
5. Left Behind to Rot
6. Enter the Dragon
7. The Clit Commander

More information: www.facebook.com/Skeletor0317

About The Author

Tessa Gorissen

Tessa is reporter and photographer for PitKings in the south part of The Netherlands. Besides concert reviews, she also writes album reviews.

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