Skinner
The Enemy Within

March 2014
Released: 2013, Indie
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: JP

After a very brief hiatus in 2010, vocalist Norman Skinner has been busy the past few years with three musical projects in the past couple of years. This month we spoke with Norman and reviewed his recent works, Skinner, Dire Peril and the new Hellscream, which I reviewed last month. (Jan 2014) Please feel free to enjoy all the reviews in this feature.



After Imagika folded, Norman did the only logically thing, go solo! Instead of sitting idol, he gathered some young talented musicians from the southern California Metal scene and together they recorded his debut solo EP. The independent EP was dubbed THE ENEMY WITHIN and it is an extremely promising debut.



The quintet play some classic US Power Metal. The songs are all in the 4-5 minute range with some solid riffs and decent individual performances. The writing and arrangements are pretty straight-forward, preferring to bring the heaviness of straight up Metal. The whole EP has a pretty quick tempo and the guitar tone is nice and thick as well, the songs even border on thrash at some points, like the song, ‘Miss Agony’. Skinner himself is an under-rated vocalist in the scene and perhaps this recent activity will help demonstrate that to more fans.