Spain always had quite a good amount of remarkable Death Metal bands, especially some of the younger ones, such as ATARAXY, MORBID FLESH or DOMAINS really got my attention. GRAVEYARD from Barcelona is also a very noteworthy band of that new generation. Okay, after a demo, several split EPs and a full-length I shouldn’t call them "new" anymore. Anyway, those Catalonian fiends deliver some excellent brutal and gloomy old school Death Metal with an unholy and blasphemous atmosphere. If one would introduce this EP to me as an old and forgotten recording from an unknown Swedish band from 1991 I would have believed it. "The Altar Of Sculpted Skulls" sounds very much like those old Sunlight Studio recordings, especially the crunchy guitar sound. This EP has really a very strong early 90s Swedish atmosphere, but GRAVEYARD is not a clone band nor did they just recycle some old DISMEMBER / ENTOMBED riffs. I would say that the compositions and the song structures are mainly influenced by early 90s American and / or Finnish Death Metal bands. Imagine a mix of early DEATH with some mid paced INCANTATION and some DEMIGOD recorded at Sunlight Studio in 1991 and you know how GRAVEYARD sounds. This EP contains four new compositions and two re-recorded songs. Those re-recorded songs (‘Ritual’ and ‘Howl Of The Black Death’) originally appeared on the split 7" with TERRORIST. I already liked their previous releases but with "The Altar Of Sculpted Skulls" the band really created something great. Everything is improved, sounds more brutal, more obscure, more sinister and more authentic. In my humble opinion this is the band’s best effort so far and I’m really looking forward what the future will bring for them. Thumbs up!!! www.graveyardofdoom.com, www.facebook.com/deathmetalgraveyard, www.myspace.com/graveyardofdoom, www.pulverised.net