Prog4you.com - Progressive Rock Review

Based in New Jersey, USA, To the Bone have since they started out four years ago fine-tuned their special brand of metal music, which indeed is cut to the bone. "Against the Dead Hand" was released in May 2008, following three years after their self-titled debut, and is a release that should spawn quite a lot of interest for this act.

To the Bone have an impressive list of influential artists on their MySpace page, where bands like King Crimson and Yes stand side by side with Voivod, SOD and Anthrax, and more modern acts like Soundgarden and Porcupine Tree have obviously made an impression too.

The music explored by these guys are clearly most influenced by the harder and meaner of their stated influences though, sound and style in particular bearing witness of that. All songs are dominated by guitar riffs from start to finish, most times with grim, gritty and dirty riff patterns dominating the tunes, and the rhythm section provides a stable foundation for the groovy sounds delivered by the axe. And there's a distinct no frills approach to songwriting and performance here; no instrument wanking or other forms of egoistical instrumental platitudes - these guys go in for the kill from the start of the first riff until the echoes of the last fade away.

When that is said, the music here isn't primitive, although it might seem so from description. The riff patterns can be rather quirky, most songs do contain guitar soloing of some sort, and the slight changes in style and manner explored in the various parts of the tunes indicates that the primitive aspects of this band is in sound rather than execution. Indeed, the compositional structure here have more in common with bands like Opeth and Tool, and certain manners in execution here often made me think of Thomas Fischer of Celtic Frost as well, in particular some of the guitar solos. Basically there's two kinds of soloing represented on this album, where one flavor are atmospheric instrumental segments with solo guitar as dominant or key ingredient, and the other is a more random and brief but energetic approach; this latter one reminding me quite a bit of Celtic Frost.

In some respects this band reminds me a bit of a Norwegian act called Turbonegro. Turbonegro explore a sound heavily influenced by old school hard rock mixed with punk influences, and sound more primitive than what they actually are. To the Bone does much of the same, but in this case it is old school metal and thrash that have been mixed with hardcore influences, primitive sounding but much more complex and intricate than you might suspect.

Fans of gritty, dirty and groovy metal better note down this release as one that should be checked out further in the immediate future; and progressive metal fans that aren't uneasy about listening to music somewhat more simplistic and brutal in nature might find themselves headbanging to this one too.

My rating: 8 (out of 10)
Reviewer: Olav Björnsen

Visit the Artist’s Website

Discography
Agains the Dead Hand (2008)
To the Bone (2005)

(Review also featured on www.progressiveears.com)