Album Review: Fleshspoil - The Beginning of the End
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I had the impression, going in, that it was a death metal album I held before me. And if I wasn’t wholly wrong, nor was the diagnosis totally beyond reproach. There’s more here, churning torrents of influences and soundscapes to make up a totality all it’s own. If the blend is unwieldy at times, it can’t be faulted on grounds of lacking ambition or scope. Shoegaze and death metal, mathcore flourishes, a hint of black metal… it’s a veritable banquet for the pretentious heavy metal sommelier (me) to engage with. For all that it’s quite deeply flawed in some regards then, it’s constantly interesting, flicking it’s secretions at me to by turns engage, exasperate, induce spine-disintegrating full-body headbang sessions or cause me to stare at my phone in the sort of abject confusion typically reserved for people who wake up to discover they’ve become hermaphrodites overnight. I like this thing; but moreover, I think I’m really going to enjoy talking about it.
No prog thoroughbred perhaps, but nonetheless sultry Akercocke simulacra pervade at introitus; leads smooth but lethal, like blades sheathed in silk, “Bleed Through This Life” provides a sublime first course. It melds perturbing atonal chords with a cold fusion of black metal, blastbeats over ethereal acoustic sections and the pulverising crunch of death-doom. It tears into a butter-smooth solo shot full of tapping and pull-offs only to hammer down into a lung-bursting groove and a delicate yet ephemeral outro. I found myself seriously impressed as much with the breadth of sounds Fleshspoil could call to command as I was with the skill of their arrangement, all elements flowing into each other with a natural grace. But then “Skies Turn to Graves” is upon us, and here we see the problem. It has plenty to laud, but it also has a truly godawful airy, saccharine chorus that feels like the ending of a Christian drama where the troubled goth protagonist wipes off the eyeshadow and accepts Jesus into his heart. And it’s here, in the midst of these two songs, that we find the extents of both Fleshspoil’s powers and their flaws. The album can (and more ooftentimes not does) kick all kinds of ass with all kinds of boots, marshalling influences from across the width of the metal spectrum and beyond, but the sheer expansiveness doesn’t always work in their favour, and at points instead of banging my head I instead found myself scratching it.
The eponymous third track continues the habit of slithering between multiple sounds from the blunt brutality of Cannibal Corpse to the whimsical meandering of Opeth. At 1.45 it delivers a merciless shoulder check of a groove that shook my fillings loose, before then drifting into calmer skies. The frosted touch of black metal reminds us that the devil watches from the shadows, before more gentle room to breathe finally crumbles to closure with a disgusting sludge section…I could go on drily describing what the song itself does, but the key thing to remember is that when Fleshspoil fire on all guns, they’re really fucking good.
They can and do circumvent the ever-present risk of penning illogical messes of disjointed, uncomplimentary styles by artfully transitioning their material from one place into the next. They just don’t manage it all the time. “A Frail Demise” for example features a curious bit of falsetto at 2.59 that sounds a bit like King Diamond catching his balls in a mousetrap. It repeats it as well, just in case you thought you’d imagined it the first time around. It’s an annoying misstep, especially when the song is getting on for eight minutes long – the bulk of the rest of the song is, I think, killer - but let’s not pretend that there isn’t room for a big shiny pair of editorial scissors to do some work here and there. That gloomy, saturnine introduction and the beautiful marriage of melody and fury in the riffwork spread throughout, the way it chicanes though section after section, twisting, turning, mutating and metamorphosising, speaks for itself well enough quite without a Rob Halford impersonator taking a football to the nuts. “Walking Dead” too boasts a bit of butterfingered writing; the interplay between skronking staccato chords followed by drums and yelled vocals in isolation from each other is arresting every time I hear it, each iteration a shuddering stab at the brake that halts forward momentum like a tungsten wall, and I’d be comfortable saying that the final track is almost completely redundant.
But I do worry sometimes when I write these reviews that I’m coming across much more snidely or negatively than I really intend to, and that fumbling attempts at humour are instead reading as sarcasm and mean-spiritedness. It’s probably best to err on the critical side than dart off on florid ejaculations of cringeworthy fluff on behalf of an album that may or may not deserve it, but even so the impression of a jaded cynic unable to find the joy in anything is not one that I like the idea of providing, so let me take a shot at balancing the scales by howling Fleshspoil’s virtues to the heavens for a time; “The Beginning of the End” is progressive, diverse and for the most part deeply impressive in terms how niftily it sews it’s tapestry together, balancing it’s more brutal, atavistic, neanderthal death metal side with exquisite harmonies and melodies beautifully, emphasising the respective merits of both approaches. The production is thick and meaty, appropriately powerful while allowing each room audible room to breathe from the heaviest moment to the gentlest; the bass pops, the drums thunder, the guitar sears – there’s an organic, warm texture to it that feels wholly “right” for the music, raw and spined but altogether legible. It’s an album I’ve found myself consistently fascinated by, reeled back in by it’s versatility and craftsmanship. It straddles the line of knowing when to surprise by taking matters in a direction you couldn’t anticipate, but it also understands the need for payoff with a huge, carnivorous riff that takes your head off your neck. It bobs and weaves like it takes dodgeball really fucking seriously, never resting on it’s ample laurels but willing to experiment and take interesting paths with its songwriting.
And I think that last one is the thing I really respect about Fleshspoil - the forward-thinking and inventiveness even if the results prove occasionally suspect. I suppose it’s partially to be expected; none of the members are rookies after all. Still; if you found yourself pushed away by my earlier negativisms, if you’ve borne with me thus far, then please do give this album a shot. It’s worthy of both your time and funds, and I'll be keeping close tabs on whatever Fleshspoil opt to grace us with next.
