Every day, my Bandcamp algorithm sends me interesting new bands from all over the world that I probably won't see at festivals or concerts in the next 25 years. They're either from Canada, New Zealand, or Chile, or they're one-man projects, or they come from a country with a relatively small music scene, like Spin the Skull from Portugal. The cover of their eponymous debut album reminded me of the numerous crust, hardcore, and D-beat bands I listened to in the 80s, and I immediately pressed play. A brutal doom sludge blast called "Celestial Hole" immediately knocks me off my feet. After a minute and a half, the excruciatingly slow intro is over, and it blasts into a mix of hardcore and sludge, peppered with numerous breaks pounded out of the drums by an octopus on the drums. "Lost Town" has a more hardcore feel, with the vocals remaining rather dark and not quite clearly recognizable in the background. Perhaps this is the doom component of this album. Then, this blasting is replaced by a psychedelic solo that could have easily made it onto a Color Haze record. The following piece, "Heat Curse," is more of a drug-fueled jam with a fantastic leading bass, where one solo follows the next. "Escape Your Fate" would have easily made it onto the Execute/Inferno split LP in the '80s.
"Escape Your Fate" is another roaring rollercoaster of rage and adrenaline that, in just under five minutes, grinds down the ruins of the previous songs. Then comes the cleanup crew in the form of the two songs "Circle" and "Spinning Skull," which blend a lot of MC5, Motörhead, and other grime rock. I'm actually pretty exhausted from headbanging while typing, but I can manage one more song. It's six minutes long and seems to take no prisoners after the first few chords—hello Monster Magnet and Okkultokrati. I'm completely spent after almost an hour of consistent blasting, which put a real strain on my civil servant hair. Spin the Skull demonstrate with their consistent brutality that songs between four and eight minutes don't have to be boring, predictable, or bloodless. A fantastic record that lets the years fly by from the first note to the last.
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