Three years passed since great and quite hard Volume was released. So now the time has come for the new, seventh album from British ragga-metalers Skindred, named Big Tings.
As for me, Skindred are worth attention and respect at least because mixing absolute opposite genres (postmodern era, you know), they created catchy and hit songs. Well, ‘Big Tings’ isn’t an exception, but it seems that the “hitness” became the main criterion for this album. Because, compared to its predecessors, it sounds very mainstream. It’s not bad maybe, but Big Tings can be hardly called Ragga-Metal. Rather it’s “Radio Ragga-Rock”.
It can’t be said that Skindred turned out to a pop band and Benji Webbe started to make disgusting poppy mainstream hip-hop that can be heard from any radio station, no. There are some typical Skindred songs in Big Tings: groovy, catchy, with fat bass and good vocals, like “Machine”, “Loud And Clear” and an album opener “Big Tings”. But these songs alternate with exaggeratedly mainstream tracks like “Last Chance” and “Tell Me”, where verse sounds like ordinary R’n’B song, which are lots of them on air and chorus sounds like mediocre poppy post-grunge.
I always said that there is nothing bad in mainstream sound: not every band want to be an underground band until the end of their days. But old Skindred fans will hardly appreciate new music experiments. With this, new fans can not accept an old band’s music, which was harder and groovier.
In a word, it’s not a Skindred, which we expected. And definitely not that one Skindred that we deserved.
Big Tings was released on April, 27 via Napalm Records.
If you really would like to support Antichrist, you can just Share our article.
You can also support Antichrist by sending a couple bucks to cover some webhosting expenses. =>> PayPal
