Fleshgore - Killing Absorption
Nice To Eat You Records
Brutal Death Metal
9 songs (31:40)
Release year: 2004
Fleshgore
Reviewed by Dylan
Crap of the month
Second chances are a bit of a funny thing in metal. Many deserving (and more importantly, undeserving) bands get numerous re-issues of their older material for various reasons. Reasons that range from poor marketing, to extremely rough mixing, to the band’s label simply seeking to make some spare cash by having another record under their belt, it’s a bit overwhelming at times. So as I sit here with Fleshgore’s…ahem, “remastered” 2003 debut blaring through my head, I can’t help but wonder why the hell this album got the approval to get another chance at life in the first place.

Though this band is from Europe (Ukraine to be exact), chromatically brutal death metal is what they play. Riffs that owe a lot to Deicide, a rhythm section that blasts along like it is the only available option in their repertoire, and downright atrocious, sometimes humorously bad vocals make this release boring in a way that only uninspired death metal can be. The songs themselves are void of any unique, or for that matter, memorable riffs, save for the fifth track, Severe Pain, whose opening riff is uncannily similar to the one found in Slayer’s Fictional Reality. Too much gain and not enough mids make the guitar tone boring and lifeless, much like the riffs themselves. Either by tremolo picking everything in the lowest register they can, or pushing the chromatic farther than it should be allowed to go, those looking for captivating melodies, crushing grooves, or flashy technicality will have to look elsewhere. Drummer Max has an equally derivative playing style as well. A few fills here and there, lots and lots of vapid blasting, delivered by a bass drum that is given much too low of a mix, and a tom that is trapped in the body of a snare drum make for a forgettable percussive performance. Now for the vocals…oh man. I just don’t understand what is heavy, brutal, or cool about sounding like a burping pig. A vocal pitch shifter is used at numerous times (in the opening track Domain of Death and in the midsection of Severe Pain for instance) and just ends up making the already unintelligible vocals sound worse. Long have I defended the numerous growling/screaming styles used by extreme metal vocalists, but these kinds of grunts are what opponents of extreme vocals use to make a killer counterargument against the vocal style.

If you haven’t yet made the inference from the previous paragraph, every single song sounds the same. A quick little riff with the drums coming in on the accented beats/ everyone starts playing their respective instruments at a fast pace/the vocals come in over an ever so slight alternation of the opening riff/throw in a slower section/repeat 9 times. I get no chills, no graphic visions in my head, no urge to hear more when I listen to this record. It’s death metal that I’m sure almost everyone who has gone at least half a foot deep into the waters of extreme metal has heard before. Bands like Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and old-school Cannibal Corpse have all done this before and done it better. Uninspired, poorly mixed, and with too much of a focus on trying to be as brutal as possible, Fleshgore must have forgotten that every song, no matter what style of music needs some kind of hook; some kind of riff, melody, atmosphere, pulsing rhythm, SOMETHING to make it stand out, in order for it to be worth the listener's time and money.
Killing Songs :
Dylan quoted 30 / 100
Other albums by Fleshgore that we have reviewed:
Fleshgore - May God Strike Me Dead reviewed by Alex and quoted 71 / 100
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