Friday 8 August 2014

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails Review

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails [Post Death / Atmospheric Death]



Such tasteful album art

If you haven't already heard the shitstorm that has been generated over the unbelievable amounts of compression on this album's production, I'd suggest you go over to sites like AMG or Metal-Fi. I will try to talk about the music at hand.


Moving past the terrible production, I quite enjoyed the ambivalent mix of technical showmanship and quite space (which then reroutes to the production, but oh well). This is my first entry to the band that started out with deathcore-ish elements and moved on to the more atmospheric 'The Harvest Womb' EP last year.

One thing that stands out is the outstanding songwriting by the band. With little maneuvering within the songs, the band has managed to spice up the stale tech-death structures which many bands tend to overuse. One technique is the use motifs, sprinkling the melody throughout the song in short bursts and different time signatures rather than using the melody as a main theme, a small but highly effective move that elevates the hooks on a song, hell, on every song here. Atmospheric sections are still grounded with heavy drum-n-bass, as opposed to full out atmospheres, and this gives the songs fluidity- without making it monotonous (yes, all you tech-death bands sound the same).

Another thing that comes out right off the bat is the heavy emphasis on melody - in technical death metal! Many of the songs are highly distinguishable, the most important being 'Sapphire', a song with a thick melody that never seems to tire out for all five and a half minutes because of how well the band has paced it. The ending track, 'Chemical Cave' simply overwhelms with you with melodies (not -solos-) that are instant and accessible despite the intricate musicianship, something I've found highly commendable on this album.

I'm still going to give this many spins, and my opinion may change as December draws nearer. As for now, I am highly impressed with the band's use of atmosphere and melody, something that may have been tried by many bands in the past, but never executed as well as the tracks on this album. The songs are peppered with numerous jam sessions that seem to have been written on the fly, but work well within the song itself without sounding too self-indulgent. Many times, bands of this genre forget that music is not about technical mastery of the instrument, but to express emotions with it. With most bands, I feel like I am listening to a bunch of robots, but not here.

I cannot give an official rating since the production still bothers me. It would be about 4.5/5 without taking sound into account. It's a 3/5 for me because of this production. What a bummer.



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