SKINFLINT are an old school style heavy metal band from Gaborone, the capital and largest city of Botswana. It's the first time I've heard of these guys, or any band from Botswana to be honest, this is their forth full length album however.

Straight off the bat a quick spin of this album reveals some very obvious influences. IRON MAIDEN is chief among them. Quite a bit of IRON MAIDEN worship going on here. Musically the band are very 80's NWOBHM but the vocals remind me more of Martin Walkyier from SABBAT/SKYCLAD fame or even at times Mille Petrozza from KREATOR.

The first track "Veya" starts off solidly enough with Kebonye Nkoloso, the bass player, thudding away. He has a very nice tone on his bass it reminds me of, dare I say, Steve Harris. Here lies one of the problems with SKINFLINT, if you flick through the beginning of every song on the album nearly every one of them starts off with a bass intro before the guitars kick in. Like most of the songs on here "Veya" doesn't follow a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle 8 type format instead the structure is fairly random and riffs are strung together almost like the way some death metal bands might put together a song. Often riffs will only be played on a song once and not repeated anywhere else. The positive side of this is that it stops songs getting boring but it often results in songs that are not really that memorable either.

Generally the pace of the album doesn't differ much from the mid-paced opening song. Giuseppe Sbrana's sharp staccato vocals are of the same style throughout. Guitar solos are littered liberally throughout the songs which sometimes work and sometimes don't. On the song "The Wizard and his Hound", a possibly ill-advised venture into the realm of the blues, the feel of the solos are lost under a mountain of distortion with what sounds like a guitar cranked to 11. Later on as the song gets heavier this guitar tone suits the song fine but at the beginning it's a bit jarring.

For me the band sound at their best during the short IRON MAIDEN inspired instrumental sections within songs such as "Sinkinda" one of the strongest songs on the album. The use of guitar harmonies in conjunction with the clanking bass of Kebonye works really well here.

SKINFLINT have potential but it's difficult to recommend this album. The fact that I enjoy them most when they sound like another band possibly isn't a good thing. They have a few live performances on YouTube and they seem to be a band that possibly come over better live than in the studio.