A Shedding of Skin Review

Band	Protector
Album	A Shedding of Skin
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	October 28, 1991
Genres	Death Metal, Thrash Metal
Labels	Major Records International
Length	41:26
Ranked	#22 for 1991 , #981 all-time

Reviewer :  Kildneybean         Rating :  95 / 100

<The Brutal Symbiosis of Death & Thrash>

In the late '80s to early '90s, when Thrash Metal was starting to become stale and bedridden, bands had to come up with a way to survive and thrive. Some bands decided to appeal to a larger base of listeners(Metallica with their eponymous record) and others had made similar decisions by tampering with other genres(Punk Sodom and Industrial Kreator, for example). Some bands, however, shifted their sound towards an extremer path. Sure, there were "Brutal Thrash" bands like Dark Angel, but this was on a higher tier. Soon enough Death & Thrash hybrid bands became prevalent.

Now this Teutonic band, Protector, is one of those bands. The two EPs and two full-releases had proved that these German thrashers were solid as hell. But this album just tops everything they had done in a span of 40 mind-numbing minutes. This stuff is way more brutal and ripping than Urm the Mad and all the songs match the quality of their Leviathan' Desire EP, some songs even being better.

Here, I've made space for a paragraph dedicated to praising Protector's song/riffwriting skills, which are straight-out amazing. The riffs are fresh and creative and has smelly rotten corpse juices dribbling out of 'em. One song presents multiple riffs but is mostly presented around one main riff. Standard Thrash Metal structure. Even so it doesn't feel boring because the riffs, again, are so well written. A Shedding of Skin, Face Fear, Doomed to Failure, Retribution in Darkness, Tantalus has some amazing ones that I can listen to all day while having a smoothie with the decaying corpse on the album cover. Indeed, that man can rot away happily after being featured in such a good album!

This, Ladies and Gents, is one of the best Teutonic Deathrash albums you can possibly find. I'mma have to stop writing this review because I need to blast this record on while headbanging vigorously.