The first track on
Skinlab's first studio release in seven years, and their first since being dropped by Century Media in 2004, sets the tone for the rest: it's an unoriginal, overlong blend of nu metal riffs, blatant
Corey Taylor impersonation (except that vocalist
Steev Esquival doesn't have the pipes, and sounds like
Taylor with some kind of parasitic lung infection), and rote rage. The songs on
The Scars Between Us steal frantically from everything and anything that's been both heavy and commercially successful in the 21st century: "Bloodclot" blatantly jacks a riff from
Metallica's "Frantic," while half the songs seem to have
Slipknot-style muttered/recited bridges or huge
Machine Head-style distorted basslines, or both. The one thing that's almost impossible to find on this disc is a note of individual creativity. Even the titles -- "My Vendetta," "Amphetamine God," "Still Suffering," "Scream at the World" -- are almost laughably generic, and could have appeared on any one of a hundred CDs by equally forgotten bands. Musically, it's totally competent, but this is the kind of metal that plays in the background of horror movies because the producers don't want to spring for tracks by big-name acts.