Skin Like Iron
Demo
Independent (2007)
Most demos you hear today can be put into two categories. The first is a bunch of fifteen year old kids recording painfully generic hardcore/metalcore in their parents' garage with terrible sound quality coming from Nowheretown, USA, desperately looking for your Myspace add. The second is usually a lineup littered with current and ex-members of prominent older bands and the band is so hyped and jocked that most kids just fall in line and say, "This is the best band in (insert genre here)." Skin Like Iron falls in the latter category. This band has current and ex-members from well-known Bay Area bands like These Days, At Risk, and Gunsmoke. Now ordinarily I approach bands like this cautiously because most of the time the buildup isn't all it's cracked up to be. But don't let the band's reputation precede it. It's pretty hard to give band similarities for this demo. I'd say the sound is somewhere between Mind Eraser and Fucked Up, but heavier. And when I say heavy, I mean a dark, raw, and almost sludgy tone, meaning that in the best way possible. This theme carries out through the length of these songs; the dark sound evokes an … Read more
The Hold Steady
Live at Fingerprints
Vagrant (2007)
The Hold Steady is a rock and roll band. With this title come certain expectations with loud electric guitars topping … Read more
Smoke or Fire
This Sinking Ship
Fat Wreck Chords (2007)
Sophomore slumps are a bitch. Smoke or Fire's debut full-length, Above the City, was a nice, short, potent shot of … Read more
