After a brief hiatus that saw him join forces with Psyclon Nine’s Nero Bellum on last year’s critically acclaimed dark electronic project NOT MY GOD, former Marilyn Manson member TIM SKOLD has returned to his primary creative outlet and namesake project, the heavy industrial metal band SKOLD. It seems his time away has only rekindled SKOLD’s fiery passion while simultaneously sparking a desire to shake things up as he takes the project in a bold new direction, crafting a new album, called Dies Irae, that leans heavy into the metal side and showcases his own aggressive guitar playing prowess. The album bleeds pure metal mayhem from the stunning album opener “Dirty Horizon,” which presages the album’s shift away from digitized electronics to the more organic feel of acoustic drums and overdriven guitars.
But Dies Irae isn’t all riffs and power chords, this SKOLD album still brims with sonically elaborate keyboards that add mood and the kind of haunting atmosphere that fans have come to expect from SKOLD. Lyrically, as the title suggests, the album finds the veteran songwriter contemplating death and final judgement (“dies irae” is a Latin phrase meaning “day of wrath”) on such tracks as “The End Is Near,” “Terrified” (“I’m not afraid of dying, I’m f**king terrified”) and the album’s closing track “Goodbye.” With “Goodbye,” which is released today as the album’s first single, Dies Irae reaches its zenith blending keyboards and guitars perfectly as SKOLD sings “Can you see the light / Do you feel the rigor mortis setting in / Can you feel the end begin / Goodbye” and thus sheds the rotting corpse of his past to fully embrace the bold future ahead.
Stream the single: https://orcd.co/skold_goodbye
Dies Irae features stunning artwork from hugely talented German artist Sebastian Nabel (https://sebastiannabel.com/) showcased beautifully on reverse-board digipak for CD plus a special limited edition vinyl edition with a reverse-board jacket and full-color inner sleeve housing a gorgeous CLEAR vinyl LP!
Pre-order/pre-save the album: https://orcd.co/skold_dies_irae
Track List:
- Dirty Horizon
- Unspoken
- The End Is Near
- Terrified
- Love Is A Disease
- This Is The Way
- Silicon Dreams
- As Above So Below
- Kill Yourself
- Goodbye
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 