When your vocalist sounds like a young Martin Van Drunen and you ask legendary designer Dan Seagrave to do the artwork for your debut album, the message is pretty clear, isn’t it? Try to tickle Rude’s guitarist and frontman Yusef Wallace by stating that their debut album ‘Soul Recall’ is “a classic death metal sounding record stuck in 1991” and he’ll answer: “I guess that’s a compliment. I’d have to say most anything from 1995 onward, until the last couple of years, sounds like crap, so I’d rather be on the good side of things.” Formed in 2008, initially Rude had a thrashier vibe and even switched monikers to suit their more straight-forward and primitive sound, calling themselves Forsaker. But after one self-titled demo, they turned back to both their initial name and a more death metal direction. “We still have that thrash aspect in our music but with a different second guitar player and we’re now tuned down half a step,” Yusef admits. “I like that genre still, not the corny stuff though, but I don’t think it’s what makes us different. I’m leaning more towards us playing death metal in E flat. I do like listening to bands in … Read More

Before Skelethal, there was Infinite Translation a classic sounding thrash band from the north of France whom guitarist Gui Haunting joined in late 2009, right before the recording of ‘Masked Reality’, their second full-length. “I had seen the band live few times but didn’t know them personally before I joined,” he recalls. “Their bass player Jon and I really hit it off although I’ve always been into a more extreme style of metal, whereas he was first and foremost a thrash fan.” Being a former drummer, Jon used Infinite Translation’s rehearsal place to relearn his way around the instrument and in 2012, the two hatched an evil plan to play death metal, the ancient way. “We love playing in both bands but we went to keep things separate: like Infinite Translation was meant play thrash, Skelethal’s raison de vivre is to perform real death metal. We love the atmosphere and vibe from the early scene and even if I’m not old enough to have had the chance to live that period, I think there was a honesty and a dedication then that sadly got lost at some point. Nowadays, there are way too many bands and everything is just a … Read More