Bareskin Essex Junction VT

Bareskin

Hellchild

Howling Bull Records, 1999

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/08/2000

Here's three words you probably never thought you'd see put together. Ready? Here goes, say it with me: Japanese death metal.

There now, wasn't that fun?

In all actuality, Hellchild's latest release, Bareskin, has some very enjoyable moments, but in the end falls prey to the same pitfalls that bedevil (oops, wrong choice of words for this genre) most death metal. First, the sound becomes very formulatic, especially disturbing because this album is just over a half-hour in length. Second, it doesn't matter whether they're singing in English, Japanese or Lebanese; I can't understand a damned thing they're saying, even with the lyric sheet. (Counterpoint: sometimes, not knowing what they're saying tends to cast a more ominous shadow over the music. If that's the way you like it, that's fine with me.)

The band - vocalist Tsukasa Harakawa, guitarist Elichiro Suzuki, bassist Yasuo Satoh and drummer Junichi Harashima - is interesting to listen to at the start of Bareskin, and not because of their nationaty. Instead, they capture the liseer with some wonderful musicanship on tracks like "Self-Scorn," "In This Freezing Night" and "The Answer". The first half of the disc is enough to make someone regain interest in this genre.