Woohoo! Grunge!
Skin Yard formed in Seattle in 1985. They never garnered much acclaim or gained a mainstream audience, but they were a huge influence on their peers as well as early pioneers of the “grunge” sound. Furthermore, their list of members is something of Who’s Who in Alternative Rock music. Jack Endino (now famed prodcuer) played guitar for the duration of the band. Ben McMillan sang. Daniel House (owner of C/Z records, who released the infamous Deep Six album, which featured not one but two Skin Yard tracks!) played bass. Many drummers drummed. Matt Cameron began in 1985 but left after a year to join Soundgarden. Barrett Martin drummed from ’90-’93 and then joined Screaming Trees. Later he formed Mad Season with Layne Staley, Mike McCready and John Baker Saunders. Jason Finn drummed in the mid-late ’80s and then joined the Presidents of the United States Of America. Lots of drummers, these guys had.
Jack Endino writes, “Cruz Records CR-009, issued on vinyl and CD spring ’90, CD has one extra song. The “difficult” third album, recorded spring and summer ’89. Band was on the verge of breakup, we had just completed a horrible tour, but we managed to pull it together in the studio. This is a violent, noisy, angry album which is kind of hard for us to listen to now, but remains some (other) people’s favorite. Was recorded at 30 ips on a 1-inch 16-track Tascam ATR 60-16 (Serial #10001) that almost ruined my career until I discovered that it sounded far better at 15 ips. (Later testing with proper equipment revealed that this particular machine at 30 ips was a bit peculiar! No wonder I was pulling my hair out…Still, I managed to compensate in the mix.) While working on Helios Creed’s “The Last Laugh” album at the time, I asked him if he would play some gtr on “Gentle Collapse” (an unfinished track left over from “Hallowed Ground”) and he said sure. Ben and Scott had been jamming with Tommy from the Accüsed so we got Tommy to add some big chug-chug rhythm gtr to “Slow Runner”. (That summer they started practicing as Gruntruck.) The last things we recorded with Scott on drums were “No Control” and our future Sub Pop single “Start at the Top”/”Watch”, this time at 15 ips. Then we broke up for a year, but since the album and single came out in the meantime, nobody else noticed.”
Skin Yard
Fist Sized Chunks
MediaFire DL Link
Tracklist:
01. Slow Runner
02. Go To Sleep
03. No Control
04. Through Nothing
05. Hungry And Hanging
06. Ritual Room
07. Over The Moon
08. Drunk On Kerosene
09. Gentle Collapse
10. No Right (CD-only track!)
