NUM SKULL never gained the popularity they could have, but now it’s too late to judge or wonder, if it’s the fault of the band members, if it’s because of wrong decisions, if the band really had bad luck, or if they simply weren’t interested in a more serious career. While the two studio albums they had in the ’90s are almost unknown these days, their debut LP "Ritually Abused" from 1988 is currently respected as one of the most important US Thrash Metal albums of the second half of the ’80s. When you say "US Thrash Metal", most people immediatelly think about the so called Big Four or Bay Area bands. Nothing could be more wrong in this case: NUM SKULL’s Thrash Metal was evil, energetic and demonic, actually "Ritually Abused" is right there, at the edge of the Death Metal genre – so if you haven’t heard this album / this band yet, rather think about acts such as MORBID SAINT, POSSESSED, DEVASTATION or RIGOR MORTIS. The album maybe isn’t extremely rare (there were a few CD reissues before, last one in 2002), but it’s cool that Relapse Records decided to put it out once again, as it’s surely one of the records that deserves to be well known. It’s also worth mentioning that their version includes a bonus track titled ‘Murder By The Minister’ (known from their debut demo tape), and it’s said it wasn’t remastered in some special way, but transfered directly from the original tapes – and the truth is it sounds a bit more harsh and dirty (in good "Metal" meaning of this word) than the previous versions. More information: www.numskullmetal.bandcamp.com and www.relapse.com