Review: GRAVESITE “Neverending Trail of Skulls”

GRAVESITE “Neverending Trail of Skulls”
Xtreem Music

XTREEM MUSIC was found on the ashes of DROWNED PRODUCTION and REPULSE REC. by its owner Dave Rotten. Everyone who loves Death Metal and dig a little deeper to find good bands knows very well who it is. Personally I love AVULSED since early 90’s when I heard ‘Embalmed in Blood’! Anyway, as I know he always was fan of real underground extreme Metal and his labels were dedicated to it.

One of the last “children” of XTREEM is the newest album of Italian GRAVESITE. The band is a young one (created year 2014), but the fact is that three of four members played together in UNDEAD CREEP which was born in 2009 in Palermo, Sicily. But life is life and guys moved to northern part of their country, So GRAVESIRE’s places of origin are Bologna and Modena. Of course all mentioned cities have long history (especially Palermo and Bologna), importance on several fields and so on. But I have no time and place to write about all this right here. That’s why you have to dig GRAVESITE ‘Neverending Trail of Skulls’ a little if you’re interested in history, culture and stiff like that.

Well, I didn’t hear their debut full-length (‘Horrifying Nightmares…’) or even demo-tape ‘Obsessed by the Macabre’, but what I hear here is like time machine for me. I feel like I’m back in the first half of 90’s and I like this feeling very much! I know that there’s anything what I didn’t hear before. Actually I have really strong connotations with old Swedish school of Death Metal (probably due to Gabri’s vocalizations), but in fact there’re huge influences of other ways of playing this genre. Yes, this is mostly about American one, but also there’re touches of some European styles in my opinion.

I think this is quite absurd to describe music (you know – riffs, beating and stuff like that) because everyone knows what old-school Death Metal means. I’m also sure that you know very well what I mean when I’m writing about Swedish, American, etc. style of playing this music. Tempo is mostly middle/fast, by the way. You’ll be able to hear all what should be in such creativity – this is about all instruments, of course. There’re also intros before some songs.

And that’s it. Everyone who loves old-school Death Metal will love this band, too. I exactly know what I’m talking about coz I love such playing and I felt in love with ‘Neverending Trail of Skulls’ directly!