Soldiering on after the departure of guitarist Jonathan Montoya,
Saliva stay the course on their seventh album,
Under Your Skin. The album finds the band continuing with the more expanded sound they started to develop on
Cinco Diablo, moving away from pure heaviness to explore bigger, more plaintive pastures. Despite the mellower excursions, there’s still plenty of tough, fist-pumping post-grunge for their longtime fans. The opening track, “Badass,” comes right out of the gate swinging, as if to let people know that while there may be some ballads on the album,
Saliva aren’t here to be pushed around, and they come back with a reminder of this later with the rap-rock rager “Burn It Up.” The album’s real strength comes from its sense of flow. The heavier moments and ballads are distributed in a way that helps to keep the album from getting monotonous, creating a nice series of hills and valleys for the listener to navigate through. While the album doesn’t find the band making any truly bold changes, it does enough to keep things fresh, making
Under Your Skin an album that’s sure to please
Saliva devotees. ~ Gregory Heaney