The Skull Defekts will remind you of a hypnotic version of Shellac. Steve Albini’s cranky vision is put into full force on this album. A certain level of aggression exists throughout the whole album, as does an extreme use of repetition.
Repetition is both the album’s greatest strength and weakness. On “Peer Amid” the bombastic nature of the repetition, coupled with the loud volume, makes it wonderful. “Join the True” does a fairly decent job of this, with the singer’s voice doing a perfect job of matching up with the instrumentation.
On other songs, the effort falls flat. “In Majestic Drag” it starts out promising but outstays its welcome. A few other songs do the same thing. I’m a fan of extreme repetition, but somehow a lot of these songs grow stale, even a bit annoying. That bothers me as I hear a lot on the album I’d like a bit more with perhaps slightly tweaked.
For the most part, these Swedes have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing. Even though I can’t connect with it in the way I’d like, I still think it’s a fairly decent effort. Had the lengths been changed a slight amount, with perhaps a greater use of distortion (like I heard in the opener) I’d have warmer feelings towards it. As it stands, they nonetheless manage to create some interesting tracks which will get stuck in your head.