Fleshspoil not only features the former drummer of Arsis but finds them attacking the Blackened Death Metal subgenre, with a catchier take than most. Their debut album The Beginning of the End finds their dissonant mix of atmosphere and thrashing striking a soothing discordance. They do not attack your ears with a bludgeoning hammering, but there is nuance to their intricate songwriting that holds the technical aspect of their sound check This album is produced in a manner that makes it sound like it came out twenty years ago, which plays to their favor.

The Black Metal influence on this album is sparse, the overall sound just feels like a darker death metal album. They incorporate a surprising amount of melody in the guitar lines for “Skies Turn to Graves.” They accelerate things into a more aggressive brand of death metal, with a sung vocal to dynamically break things up. This album is full of surprises, rather than sticking to the Death Metal rule book. The eponymous song is driven by a more technical syncopation with a jarring groove. Their songwriting will continue to win you over with its dynamic dips down into more melodic sections, before galloping back into grooving riffs. The vocals are normally in a lower death metal growl, which works best over the more crunching moments such as when the band launches into a more old-school Tampa death metal mode for “Walking Dead”. They break down into an almost metal core-like groove making it worthy of headbanging, which is all you can ask for this sort of thing.

“A Frail Demise” has a more sludge creep to it, with the vocals shifting toward more of a coarse throaty roar that might bring early Mastodon to mind. The only black metal influence heard as the album progresses are the hints of blast beats the drummer uses granted a few blast beats don’t make a black metal band, that takes a commitment to darkness, which these guys are not pretending to have, which is respectable after all music resonates more when it comes from a place of personal truth. a black metal band. They include a Rob Halford-like shriek that sits back in the mi, but that also does not make this a power metal album, though they are more likely to play Dungeons and Dragons than they are to burn down a church.

The last song sits on the more melodic side of sludge, with the guitars taking on a more post-rock approach to the melodies. Sung vocals also come into this song they are more forward in the mix and less leather-clad. While this is a death metal album at its core, it should also appeal to fans of bands Inter Arma. They are capable of capturing the sounds you want from metal while delivering them in a manner that shows stellar songwriting.

Buy the album here:
https://fleshspoilofficial.bandcamp.com/album/the-beginning-of-the-end

9 / 10
WIL CIFER
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