Skindred take an extra large pot and stir metal and reggae together. Purists from either camp would usually cross arms, close their eyes and refuse to talk to one another.
The same purists would briefly plug their ears with fingers whilst being told that metal gods Judas Priest wrote the first ever reggae-metal song, ‘The Rage’,back in 1980. History is on the side of Wales’ own “raggametallers”, like it or not.
What’s served up is low-slung metal swaggering straight from stony Welsh streets. Fist-shaking ‘Kill The Power’picks up Rage Against The Machine’s agitprop n’ punk gauntlet, punching toward metal’s gleam and crunch. ‘Ninja’ gets raucous with rap and sweet with soaring choruses, a late-’90s nu-metal kicker swept of cobwebs and lovingly refurbished for the modern era.
Autobiographical ‘The Kids Are Right Now’marches along to one beat and one riff before the floaty and smoky ‘We Live’preaches peace, love and taking green. It grows and grows with an unforgettable chorus the size of a small world, a world where everyone’s holding hands and grinning like a rabble of red-eyed Rastas. We hope.
Out now on Napalm/Cooking Vinyl.
