Like a lot of people, I guess, I was introduced to Skaven via the split they shared with Dystopia. Their music didn’t particularly sound likeDystopia (what did – heck, what does?) but you could detect familiar threads: a sort of ugly commonality that suggested if you peeled back enough filthy layers you’d find a degree shared lineage. Over the years I’d pick up the split with Stormcrow, check in with the Skuld discography and search in vain for their selt-titled 7” – encounters that were always fraught, but more often than not actually rather enjoyable. A quarter century after it all ended, Carbonized have decided to release three of their songs (two from that elusive 7”, and the one on the Stormcrow split) together as a mini album. Quite why they’ve done so when the discog is still kicking about is anyone’s guess, but crawling back into the Skaven nest is really no bad thing despite the many innoculations it requires. Spiralling and demented, their music presents a mongrel mix of UK crust (Deviated Instinct; Hellbastard…) and US outliers like Nausea, Buzzov*en and Neurosis circa ‘Souls At Zero’. Snarling, soupy and neither-fish-nor-fowl, the songs scrabble and gnaw, galloping away one moment and slowing to a grubby crawl the next while pinched harmonics, odd samples and hunchbacked Dick Dale melodies are lobbed into the roiling churn and parched, rasped vocals are emptied out like guts on a slaughterhouse floor. Despite the years that have passed it’s still odd and it’s still ugly as hell – a mutant blob of crust-damaged sickness that’s definitely worth (re)investigating if your tastes tend towards the more gnarled end of the spectrum.
