Skrew

Around 1990, Adam Grossman launched Skrew in Texas as an outlet for his creative impulses, functioning less as a conventional band than as a personal vehicle for his interest in the emerging style of industrial metal. At a moment when the sound was still taking shape, Grossman helped define its character and trajectory, an approach that propelled comparable acts such as Nine Inch Nails and White Zombie to major success. Although Skrew arrived at an opportune time and shared stylistic traits with the genre’s leading figures, the project never matched their appeal or songcraft, prompting Grossman to abandon electronic textures by the late ’90s and produce predictably uneven results.

Skrew’s 1992 Metal Blade debut, Burning In Water, Drowning in Flame, moved briskly enough at retail to suggest the possibility of gold or platinum certification on the scale achieved by Nine Inch Nails. The 1994 follow-up, Dusted, stands as the group’s strongest work and earned widespread critical praise matching that of its predecessor, yet sales and audience growth evidently fell short of Grossman’s expectations, leading him to alter course. The resulting 1996 album, Shadow of a Doubt, favored straightforward guitar-driven arrangements over earlier electronic layering, exposing both a creative downturn and the project’s serviceable but undistinguished songwriting. Grossman’s strengths lie in crafting aggressive fusions of metal riffs with inventive programming rather than conventional dirge-metal execution.

The final release, 1997’s Angel Seed XXIII, proved still more lackluster, presenting a generic new-metal approach that would puzzle listeners acquainted only with the debut. Even so, Skrew merits acknowledgment for devising forward-looking music at a time when such experimentation received genuine support and recognition.