Genocide Skin - 'Improvise, Adapt, Overcome' (Album Premiere)

September 20, 2016

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Oakland, California’s Genocide Skin have the musical hallmarks of a modern industrial metal act: synthesized effects littered across the sound field, stuttering riffs that duck-walk across the beat and impossibly precise drumming that nails the music firmly into the wall. But there is something unavoidably human about the band, a primal ferocity that brings the tunes to life outside the digital audio workstation.

I first saw that ferocity in their live show, where drummer Peژ Mon (Ghoul, Satya Sena, ex-Secret Chiefs 3, ex-Girth) perpetually contorted his face while beating the living daylights out of his kit. Then I heard it once again on Genocide Skin’s debut record, Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, with vocalist/guitarist Rudy Pina (Cyanic) screaming, growling and howling into the red throughout the album’s half hour of carnage. For all the futuristic effects and electronic loops and beats that find their way onto these songs, it’s Pina’s bug-eyed riffs and Peژ Mon’s animalistic pounding that force songs like “Scarcity Mindwave” and the title track to bore into your head. Elsewhere, the out of control chaos heard on “Segregator” and “Ruinous Perception” bring to mind a horrific melding of Meshuggah and fellow Oakland peers Dimesland. It’s the sound of virtuosity, technology and inner fury exploding from speaker cones in a way that’s positively captivating.

—Avinash Mittur

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