It’s been quite the slog for SKAM. They’ve toiled away in the middle of England since 2011’s It’s Come To This introduced a highly competent power trio, albeit one with little to distinguish them from the herd. Three years later Peacemaker – particularly the standout The Wire – was a wall of sound. Just when they seemed set fair for meat-’n’-potatoes success, in 2017 they jettisoned the template and chanced their arm with The Amazing Memoirs Of Geoffrey Goddard, a concept album about a time-travelling Spitfire pilot. It rocked, but differently.
Seven years on (why it’s been seven years is far from clear), what now? They’ve doubled down, built on the best of their past, added a contemporary twist and gone for rock broke. And they’ve succeeded spectacularly. From the sizzling first moments of the opening Rising Fever in which guitarist/singer Steve Hill unleashes a dizzyingly ferocious guitar solo, it’s pretty clear what lies ahead and SKAM don’t disappoint.
Highlights abound, whether it’s the galloping drums that underpin Fate Of The Souls before it pauses midway through to build into a magnificent guitar avalanche, with added backing vocals; the noisy pathos of the frustrated working man’s anthem The Grind (‘Paid my dues, working the nine-tofive… I can’t stop screaming’), or the buzzsaw bitterness of Selfish Friend: ‘You always seem to let me down.’
For the most part, these may be songs yearning for escape from the routine, but SKAM are seemingly on a one-band quest to remind us how thrilling all-out, no-holds-barred guitar rock can be. They offer screaming wind-tunnel riffs, engine-room thunder from Neal Hill’s drums (can you have lead drums? SKAM can) and Matt Gilmore’s bass, and it’s all topped off by Steve Hill’s strutting vocals.
SKAM do all this in the manner of a classic power trio. They have the pace and thrust of Hüsker Dü and Sugar, the unmistakeable Britishness of Therapy? and Feeder, and an intensity that’s entirely their own.
Inevitably, this album is more relentless and less subtle than Geoffrey Goddard, but this pony still has more than just one trick. Travesty has an earworm chorus, Face Down is a percussive tour de force and, best of all, the closing title track takes almost nine minutes to evolve from its whooshing-wind near-prog opening (think The Damned’s Curtain Call, but only for a moment) into a rip-roaring anthem.
From The Depths is great leap forward for the Leicester band. Their future now looks dazzling.
