Rhythm is a dancer - A review of Skinflint's Skinflint

Skinflint might be from Botswana but the dynamic trio offers traditional metal somewhere between heavy blues rock, heavy metal and a shot of doom metal on its self-titled effort. Imagine a slightly faster version of Black Sabbath with less melodic and more shouted vocals and you have a pretty good idea what this record sounds like. The album stays faithful to this guiding line and sounds coherent from start to finish as it avoids offerings experiments or fillers. The fact that a few songs might sound too alike shouldn't be ignored but the band avoids this trap by offering just below forty-five minutes of great music.

One thing I really appreciate about this album is the band's great sense for engaging rhythms. The almost danceable and cool rhythms in ''Birds and Milk, Bloody Milk'' explain why this song was used to promote the record with a cool music video. ''Thorns of Fire'' has so much power that it will make your head nod and your feet move very easily. The great diversified closer ''Tokoloshe'' ends in a very rhythmic way as especially the last minute is quite gripping.

From time to time, the band repeats its great rhythmic patterns a little bit too much. It's understandable that the group wants to evoke a hypnotizing atmosphere but the opening two minutes of ''The Prophecy of Nongqawuse'' are rather pointless and sound as if the band didn't know how to actually start the song. Thankfully, such incidents remain exceptional on this album.

If you like hard rock music with great rhythms recalling legendary bands like Black Sabbath in the seventies or early eighties, you will certainly enjoy Skinflint's self-titled record. Put your headphones on, travel back in time and keep your feet, hands and head moving to enjoy properly.

Final rating: 80%