WOUND

	Wound
	Produced by Bryan Martin and Skin Chamber
	Released on 1991
	no chart information
	Find it at GEMM
RRC 9274 cover

T he imagery comes courtesy of the cassette inner sleeve, and captures the essence of Skin Chamber’s debut: “spludge-splattered nightmares ripped into sin,” “a tapestry of silken phlegm,” “heedless in slumber,” “clotted fragments of pain.” A suspiciously random juxtaposition of words, to be sure, but emblematic of the death metal movement (for which label Roadrunner was known). Except that Skin Chamber is more a cross between industrial music and death metal. Scratch that. An inverted cross between industrial and death metal. If there’s a Hell (and there must be, because financial services executives can’t be evil enough to invent those profit-taking strategies on their own), this is the kind of music you can expect they’ll play in Hell’s waiting room, if only to scare the bejeezus out of you. Pointing to NIN, Nitzer Ebb or even the rap/metal experiment of Anthrax is misleading, since those bands actually wanted people to listen to their music. Chris Moriarty and Paul Lemos could harbor no such illusions for Skin Chamber. (I read on AMG that this was actually a side project for the pair, which is possible, though I don’t care to explore it that deeply.) Wound is a better bet to please metal and industrial fans than “traditional” death metal bands (okay, those words simply don’t belong together) like Death and Pestilence. Listen to “Burning Power” or “Sucked Inside” and you’ll catch a glimpse of the crossover potential. Of course, you’ll have to hack through a bloody barricade of gooey viscera to get there, but that’s half the fun. Wound remains one of the more interesting two-dollar tape cassettes I’ve happened upon in the dark. Yeah, Roadrunner was cranking out buckets of this stuff in ’91, but Skin Chamber at least strikes me as death metal with an angle (i.e., a personality), so it might be a more interesting avenue than some in the label’s stable.

RRC 9274 picture booklet

TRACK LISTING

CARVED IN SKIN (APT. 213) 3:19
SLICE OF GOD 8:00
SUCKED INSIDE 7:41
SKIN ME 1:20
MIND GRINDER 6:01
IN THE SEWER OF DREAMS 7:33
BURNING POWER 5:21
THE NAILS OF FAITH 7:58
FAT HACKER 0:40
HORDE 3:08
SWOLLEN UNDERGROUND 6:20
SWALLOWING SCRAP METAL (PT. 2) 3:11
(*CD bonus track:) HEALING TIME

All songs written by Paul Lemos and Chris Moriarty

CREDITS

PAUL LEMOS -- guitars, bass, voice, percussion, samples
CHRIS MORIARTY -- drums, voice, percussion, samples
Bryan Martin -- engineer, mixing
Brian Shanley -- cover design and logo
Patricia Mooney-- art direction
Ira Rosenson -- photos

return to SKIN CHAMBER discography

REGION	RELEASE DATE	LABEL	MEDIA	ID NUMBER	FEATURES
US	1991	Roadrunner	CD/CS	RCC 9274	picture sleeve

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