Review Summary: With the most overt displays of technicality since The Wretched Spawn and smarter writing, A Skeletal Domain is Cannibal Corpe's best album since Bloodthirst.
A Skeletal Domain is notable as the probably the first time ever that Alex Webster didn't write the majority of the music. Pat O'Brien pens 5 of the tracks here, Webster 4, and Barrett 3 - and as a result there is probably the most tangible shift in style the band has had since Vile. The classic mid-paced spidery riffs that come to dominate a lot of the Corpsegrinder-era albums is mostly gone, with faster music, more unexpected shifts in tempo, and a generally darker tone. Combined with the exceptionally clean production courtesy of Mark Lewis, there is a lot more in the way of technical details, if somewhat less viscerality.
Opener
High Velocity Impact Spatter is probably the greatest Cannibal Corpse opener and one of their best tracks, with its juxtaposition of complex arpeggios and catchy tremolo picking, along with its excellently structured chorus. It's perhaps the firmest tone setter of all their openers, too, as its likely the most technical song on a frequently very technical album.
Kill or Become,
Headlong into Carnage and the title track introduce more thrashy elements, and use the bottom end of their low tuning a little more sparingly than most Cannibal Corpse tracks, introducing the extra weight in more dynamic and memorable ways. The styles also get effectively switched up in the middle of the album, with
The Murderer's Pact and
Funeral Cremation sounding darker and often hanging at more of a mid-tempo than the relatively breakneck openers. The more old-school tinged
Icepick Lobotomy and the slower, nastier
Vector of Cruelty are also welcome changes of pace. In general, the first two thirds of this album are pretty spot on and extremely entertaining, with greater variety than usual and some amazing tracks.
The main problems with this album come from a lack of consistency and the slow loss of momentum with the last few tracks.
Sadistic Embodiment has the benefit of being surrounded by good tracks, but is itself one of the least interesting tracks present, with mostly boring riffs until its mid-course breakdown and a rather underwhelming verse. The last few tracks from
Bloodstained Cement onward feel the most typical and weakest of the album.
Bloodstained Cement itself isn't very memorable, and whilst a fun listen in isolation it doesn't really bring anything new in terms of dynamics or tone.
Asphyxiate to Dominate is one of the worst tracks since Kill with its honestly very annoying chromatic riffing and chorus, with barely any real variation throughout. The closer
Hollowed Bodies is good, but perhaps too closely follows the template of prior album closers like
Condemned to Agony or
Torn Through, with explosive moments but less of a tangible groove. As a result, despite the overall significantly greater creativity of the album, the ending is a little underwhelming. Other minor complaints are that the bass, despite being very present in the mix, feels a little phoned in compared to Torture, where there were many cool bass breaks or intricate basslines under simpler guitar riffs that helped add a layer of depth to the sound.
With a significantly higher technical ceiling and some more wise uses of tempo shifts, A Skeletal Domain is one of the catchiest and most memorable Cannibal Corpse albums, with most tracks having a far more distinct identity than their other albums. With small issues of pacing and some individual weak tracks, it isn't their absolute best album, but the combination of catchier thrashy riffs and darker tone at points results in A Skeletal Domain being the main standout of the band since the reintroduction of Rob Barrett with Kill.
