Sweden’s Tim Skold has been an integral part of the Rock and Metal scene for over 40 years. Begun back in 1985 with the band Kingpin, he would soon co-found Shotgun Messiah, whose self-titled 1989 debut would make a significant international impact. Going on to put out a solo debut album in 1996, he would also become a part of KMFDM (contributing to numerous albums, including 1997’s Symbols and 1998’s Megalomaniac), before becoming a key collaborator in Marilyn Manson, co-writing and producing 2003’s The Golden Age of Grotesque and 2007’s Eat Me, Drink Me.
Extremely impressive, given his resume; lest we not forget, he collaborated with others such as Motionless in White, helping shape their 2012 Infamous and 2014 Reincarnate albums. More recently, he collaborated with Alt-Rock band Love Ghost on 2024’s Love Ghost x Skold (blending Industrial with Emo, Hip Hop, and Nu-Metal). Now, just a year later, he is back with a new solo album entitled Caught In The Throes. Skold’s eighth solo album, and first since 2023’s Seven Heads, Caught In The Throes, arrived on October 10, 2025, through Metropolis Records.
Remaining extremely prolific, it is Skold’s fourth solo album in the last five years and still has plenty of bite. With themes of greed and corruption, betrayal and destruction, ghosts and inevitability, and confession, collapse, and mortality, beginning with “All The $ In The World.” Here, there is a retro-Goth musical feel as the song explores our obsession with wealth and critiques materialism. This is while “Cold As Ice” is a delightfully draggy piece that reflects its emotional detachment, the way some people reduce human relationships to transactions. You can practically see the predator stalking its subsequent acquisition. “=’s (Private Libertine)” continues the thread talking about Libertine excess, indulgence without consequence. Listening to the track, we can see a guy walking shoulders squared, nose out, oblivious to others.
Later, “House of a Thousand Lies (Praying to Lost Gods)” aptly explores deception, false promises, and the betrayal that follows once greed’s foundation has been laid. This leads to the fall, which gives the vocals a detached sound. “The Great Theatricality” is a drum-driven piece about performance, masks, and spectacle as survival, perhaps hypocrisy between what is seen and what is. Meanwhile, “All Humans Must Be Destroyed” is a journey into nihilism, industrial apocalypse. Then “In A Grave (Specter)” is a foreboding track musically talking about a ghostly presence, perhaps, demons we create from life baggage, and the ever-present signs of our mortality. “Soon Enough” continues the thread of inevitability of collapse. Musically, we can literally see the inevitable chasing its prey.
Still fascinating, “That Kind of Magic (Confessions of a Supermodel)” has a haughty beat as it delves into vanity, confession, and the fragility of image. This comes before “Do You Really?” flips the script, talking about doubt, confrontation, critics, but more the self, questioning authenticity to a beat that’s almost demure, like the doubt it talks about. “The Inconsolable” closes the thread as reality sets in with grief, despair, and emotional collapse. Again, Skold revisits the detached vocals, as if he is having an out-of-body experience, feeling he has been bested.
Wrapping up this set, “Wrong Everything” recognizes failure and the disillusionment of all that was curated over an upbeat, retro-feeling beat, “Pop the Smoke” is a bluesy piece (a climax of self-destruction as the image is destroyed), and “Digging My Own Grave” is a power ballad that brings the album to a close, revisiting mortality as self-destruction consumes and the clock ticks to death.
Overall, Skold’s Caught in the Throes carries you through a whole journey of grandiosity to the fall. For that, Cryptic Rock gives his new album an easy 5 out of 5 stars.
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