Skullfist
Chasing The Dream

April 2014
Released: 2013, Noiseart Records
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Helias Papadopoulos

What would you say if I told you that there is a new band that blends Scorpions, Motley Crue, Helloween and Exciter so perfectly and it doesn’t looks like another retro speed/glam/heavy band?



That is Skull Fist and their new second album, CHASING THE DREAM. I am very proud of this band because they manage to pay homage to Iron Maiden, Saxon, Racer X and the forenamed bands without being a copy-band. They write their own songs based on the well-known patterns and songwriting but they put their own stigma on them.



CHASING THE DREAM left a very strong impression on me. Skull Fist’s energy blew me away. This record contains a lot sing-along choruses and it is an album without any filler or blemish. Jackie Slaughter’s vocals is the attraction of this album together with the entrancing guitar solos and double harmonized guitar leads, the steady rhythm section and the great album production being modern and 80’s in the same time.



Songs like ‘Shred’s Not Dead’, ‘Hour To Live’, the title track…hm…the entire album can be a live setlist on its own. All the songs are pure N.W.O.B.H.M. diamonds with a touch of the glorious time of glam rock. Kinda those bands made metal proud and strong. Few bands have managed to pull off such a seamless and triumphant splicing of this kind of metal, true, real and pure heavy metal as Skull Fist have managed to do with this album, and in this extremely unique, surreal and particular world the band dwells in.



Every rhythm, every riff, every vocal on CHASING THE DREAM leans grotesquely askew. High-speed sections canter sideways into stroke-slowed stutters before whirring back into panic-fueled passion, and chords chase their own short-lived hallucinations. Skull Fist shape their own way to the top by ‘chasing the dream’, which may prove to be real.