Band Interview: Skeletal Remains

Ahead of their excellent new album ‘The Entombment of Chaos’ being released on September 11th 2020 via Century Media Records, we had the opportunity to chat to Chris Monroy (vocals/guitars) of Skeletal Remains. What follows is a transcript of some of the talking points from the interview with the full thing available on YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The world looks very different to how it did when you last played in London (December 2019). How have you been coping?

Yeah, that was a killer show!

It’s been pretty crazy, so much has changed in just a matter of a couple of months. But, you know, we’re taking it day by day, trying to stay as positive as possible. Mostly just happy all our family and our loved ones are healthy and doing good.

I mean, we can’t really do shit with the band, you know, we’re not able to play shows or anything. So that really sucks. But we’re really counting the days for this record to drop. And we’re really excited to see what everybody thinks.

The focus now is on the incoming release of the new album, The Entombment of Chaos. Aside from your excitement, how are you feeling about the finished product, now you are this close to release.

Yeah, like I said, we’re all really stoked. This is I mean, I’m sure I say this every record, but I think this is our best work yet.

I mean, it’s a very extreme progressive record. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. But, you know, not having the right team and not having the right members, I guess it was impossible. But we’ve always wanted a record that’s very aggressive, very extreme, heavy and brutal. So, yeah, I think we were able to accomplish that with this record.

We’re really excited to see what people think.

What made you want to go deeper?

I think it was more just like a natural progression. We’re all improving and getting better with time as musicians and as a band. So it was more natural, obviously. You know, when we do a record, our take is just to try and give the listener something fresh and not try and release the same album twice.

We were going through a lot of, like, personal shit. And I think that helped the record be so aggressive and brutal.

Is this the most layered Skeletal Remains release so far?

I think so. We have tried a lot of different ideas for this record, you know, the instrumental one, having more of an interlude and stuff like that. Some clean vocals on one of the songs. We try to experiment and try different things instead of trying to repeat ourselves but it’s still Skeletal Remains. It is still, death metal and, you know, aggressive and stuff.

This feels like a big moment for Skeletal Remains. Is this something you’re feeling?

Yeah, definitely, once we were done with this record there was a certain feeling that we got. This was something special. We feel like just like I said, our best record is this. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to explain the feeling we got once we heard the finished mix and played it from the beginning to the end of the album. we were like, we think this is going to be, you know, the record for us.

But I guess we’ll see what happens. I mean, some people might not like it. You know, it’s a little bit different than our previous stuff. So some people might not be happy with it or we might gain new fans from it. But, yeah, I guess we’ll just see what people think.

If you pick up the limited edition, you get a bonus track in the form of a cover of Disincarnate’s Stench of Paradise Burning. What made you want to cover this track in particular?

So when me and Mike started this band, it wasn’t really started as a band. It was more just me and Mike and a few friends getting together, playing some covers, hanging out and having fun. When I was touring and stuff with my other band. Disincarnate was a band that would we would always be covering a lot of songs from.

When we released the first demo and obviously after the first album, there was always talk about doing this song as a cover. So originally this cover was supposed to be on our second record!

We recorded it with the old drummer, and we just weren’t too stoked on how it sounded. You know, the drumming wasn’t just cutting it for us. So, you know, we decided to part ways with that drummer and we asked our good friend to help us out for the record. And since it was somewhat of a last minute thing for Carlos to come in and record with us, we scratched the idea of doing the cover because we wanted him to focus on the original songs.

So that’s why it didn’t happen on the second record. And once our third record was in the works, the idea came back to the table. We were going to do the cover, but the drummer that we used on that record wasn’t stoked on it. He just wasn’t a fan of Disincarnate and he wasn’t willing to take the time to learn the covers. So I thought fine, we won’t do it.

So finally, for this record, we’re like, well, why don’t we just do the cover finally, since we time! So, yeah, it was more of just something that, you know, we’ve been wanting to do for quite some time.