Serpents Unleashed

Personnel: Chance Garnette (vocals); Nate "N8 Feet Under" Garnette, Scott "Scunty D" Hedrick (guitar); Dustin Boltjes (drums).
Recording information: Godcity Studio, Salem, MA.
Photographer: Chris Casella.
It's rare for an album's title to describe how it sounds, but on Serpents Unleashed, the fifth outing from Athens, Ohio band Skeletonwitch, it's strangely appropriate. Rampaging straight out of the gates, the album's titular opening track serves as a reminder that this is a band that's not about wasting time or fussing with lengthy, clichéd intros. Instead, these guys rip straight into it with yet another in an increasingly long line of albums that are big on speed and short on running time. In service to their vigorous approach to metal, the band do a great job of not anchoring themselves to any specific genre, instead taking whatever bits and pieces of death metal, black metal, and thrash that have the most metal, and adding them into their supercharged sound. This makes Serpents Unleashed an album that's only predictable insofar as you know it's going to attempt to take you on a vicious, 30-minute hell ride through some of the darkest parts of the metal world. With such a stellar track record under their belt, Skeletonwitch are definitely a band that's worth your time, something they won't ask for very much of. ~ Gregory Heaney