There's this guy named Skull, right? That's what everyone calls him. He played drums in hardcore bands like Black My Heart and Criminal Instinct, but more important than that, he's a true larger-than-life character. He's one of these garrulous, charismatic, slightly scary guys that you sometimes meet if you go to enough underground shows. (I haven't met Skull, but that was my impression when he was on the Forum Of Passion podcast a few years ago.) In 2020, Skull started what seemed like a one-off solo project called Skinhead, and he released Fuck Fake Skins, a demo full of songs about being up fake skinheads. It was way better than anyone could've anticipated, and now Skinhead is a band two full-length albums.
Skinhead followed Fuck Fake Skins with a self-titled 2022 EP and with the 2023 full-length Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt. Today, they release their second album It's A Beautiful Day, What A Beautiful Day. It rules pretty hard. These days, the band includes members of hardcore bands like Terror, Haywire, and Conservative Military Image. Taylor Young from Twitching Tongues, God's Hate, and a million other bands is in Skinhead now, and he also produced the album. The sound is somewhere between oi and hardcore, with some extremely catchy glam-stomp guitar parts, and it mostly works as a vehicle for Skull to rant about stuff.
For all their genre trappings, Skinhead come off as a tougher Drug Church, or a much tougher Hold Steady. Skull has a hardcore shouter's voice, but he delivers his lines less like the singer of a band and more like the drunk who has you cornered in an extremely loud bar. His lyrics might not be poetry, but they demand attention anyway because it's fun to hear this guy bellowing about beating you up or complaining about the friends who always leave him with the bill when they go out to dinner together. This being a fairly disreputable gentleman, you need to get used to the idea that an album like this will include things like a long string of suicide jokes: "Kill yourself! A total fucking cleanse! I hope they cancel your funeral because no one attends!" If you can get down with that type of thing, then I heartily recommend streaming the album below.
It's A Beautiful Day, What A Beautiful Day is out now on Closed Casket Activities.
