Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Fleshworld / Gazers / Viscera/// – Split

October 14, 2014 • Unquiet Records

Reviewing promotional split albums always feels a bit weird, but sometimes the material really is good enough that I have to share it. Today's edition is three metal bands from all over Europe: Fleshworld from Poland, Gazers from France, and Viscera/// (slashes included, please) from Italy.

Fleshworld gets the split off to a great start—I'm really enjoying their tracks. Their style of sludge metal manages to be both a little atmospheric and very driving at the same time, a bit Cult-of-Luna-esque without as much grandeur. The rhythmic patterns going on here are great—the hard-hitting drum grooves are especially irresistible, and there are lots of really nice crunchy guitar lines holding it together. They occasionally launch into some more intense punkish-blastbeating, quiet clean bridges (naturally), and even a little bit of psychedelic noodling, which are all nice enough—but man am I digging the standard sludge. I haven't heard many new bands lately doing it as well as they do. I only wish the first two songs were a little longer, as the nine-minute "Rezygnacja" is, to give me a bit more to sink my teeth into.

Gazers sounds nothing like their name implies—this is some raw and harsh screamo, chaotic riffing, blasting, some slower chugging sections, the occasional breakdown, and all. Maybe it's that Fleshworld is a hard act to follow but I'm not as thrilled about this band—though they are still pretty decent. The songwriting is a bit disjointed and hard to follow at times, but they definitely have the texture and mood down well. Admittedly I've never been a huge fan of this style of post-hardcore/screamo so I'm probably not the right person to take Gazers on, but you could certainly do a lot worse.

Viscera/// brings us back around to the sludge metal side of things, but in a much different way from Fleshworld. The promo kit calls them "psychedelic" but I don't think I'd agree whatsoever; they're definitely way too clean and heavy for that (blastbeating isn't psychedelic, and flanger pedals don't automatically make you so, no matter what anyone says). But they do have nice big riffs aplenty, and bigger riffs you rarely have seen. Their style is all over the place, though—they swerve from crunching rhythmic lines to almost-black-metal tremolo blasting to upbeat stoner metal, and it's a bit weird. The poppy clean singing in "Nobody's Diary" feels wildly out of place and the band can get a bit too repetitive at times, but the majority of what they've put down here is pretty great.

In short—one split, plenty of great brutality to be had, and I'm off to see if there's any more from these bands to check out, because my interest is definitely piqued.

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