The relationship between metal and classical music has always been a highly dubious one. From various shredders claiming to have been inspired by the great composers, to Metallica’s clunky-as-hell S&M outing, to Dimmu Borgir hiring the Prague Philharmonic to inject some Wagnerian bombast into their mainstream take on black metal, the two genres have crossed paths on many occasions, never quite reaching a complete and total synthesis and often to less-than-compelling results.
That’s where Fleshgod Apocalypse comes in with Agony, the Italian quintet’s second album overall and first for Nuclear Blast. I’m not sure what the band was smoking when they struck upon the idea of combining ultra-brutal death metal with contemporary classical (or when they approved the albums’s garish cover art and logo, for that matter), but goddamn if it doesn’t work, resulting in one of the year’s most epic and exhilarating listens, extreme music’s answer to a Summer blockbuster (those who know me know how much I love Summer blockbuster season, but that’s a whole other story). Although the band has brought trace orchestral elements to the table on previous releases, Agony takes things to another level by fully incorporating those elements into nearly every nook and cranny of the album.
At first listen, Agony sounds like total cacophony as the guitars/bass/drums/vocals foundation of Fleshgod Apocalypse’s music does battle with the synthesized orchestra for dominance. But the more one listens, the more these two seemingly opposing forces begin to gel with one another, creating what is possibly the most seamless melding of the metallic and the orchestral yet. Of course, some will likely complain about the heavily compressed production scheme and the triggered drums, or complain that the metal is buried underneath the orchestra. I can only encourage them to keep listening, because Agony sounds positively fantastic once one’s ears become accustomed to the sonic maelstrom.
Rather than making Fleshgod Apocalypse’s music more palatable, the ever-present symphonic component actually makes everything sound heavier. What’s more brutal than being bludgeoned over the head repeatedly by a ripping death metal band and a full-on orchestra? It isn’t just about heaviness though. I’m no expert on classical music, but I’ve always thought of the genre as being about pathos, which is at odds with the often soulless nature of modern brutal/technical death metal. This idea of pathos is reinforced by the operatic clean vocals of bassist Paolo Rossi. Rossi’s vocals often sound like he’s straining to reach the higher registers, and this lends another level of emotional depth to the proceedings, a tortured human soul struggling to be heard above the unforgiving pandemonium of the music. Modern death metal’s cruel, cerebral precision fuses with classical music’s stirring appeal to the emotions, to create something truly unique.
Fleshgod Apocalypse is onto something with the unholy amalgamation of orchestral heaviness displayed on Agony. Although many have tread similar waters in the past, few if any have come this close to creating such a perfectly relentless onslaught of classically informed brutality. If you think that symphonic metal is all about faux-gothic cheese or overblown black metal theatrics, Agony might just change your mind.
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I had no idea they were even planning on the symphonic stuff. I expected just another above-average tech-death album. Intriguing, to say the least.
I like their costumes/outfits.
I’ve heard just a little of their stuff before, enough to be interested… and now this really leaves me feeling intrigued. I don’t often (if ever) buy anything just solely on a reviewer’s recommendation, but this might be one of those exceptions. Thanks for writing/sharing.
Josh – I am really happy to read your review, because, simply put – “you’ve got it!”.
There are so many pretentious “tr00 kvlt br00t4l” metalhead reviewers out there who naysay this album. Some of their common complaints include:
1) “I don’t like all this symphonic stuff”
- Then why the hell are you listening to a SYMPHONIC tech death album, friend?! Go listen to one of the standard “tr00″ death acts out there and spare us, mmmkay.
2) “The guitars are too low in the mix; the orchestral elements overpower everything”
- I would agree with that *IF* the orchestral elements “pussified” the album, but they actually serve to turn UP the brutality, along with the beauty, as you correctly observed.
3) “The symphonic/orchestral elements are just thrown in at random”
- HELLO, have these idiots been listening to the correct album?! I can agree with that as a criticism of their previous outings (where the classical interludes are more of an afterthought), but they’re so seamlessly integrated into this album that the whole thing is a brilliant technical death metal symphony (with a bit of black metal thrown in on “The Forsaking”). Random, my ass.
4) “The clean vocals turn me off”.
OK, this is subjective, but I think the clean stuff by Rossi goes very well with the specific parts of the songs they incorporate them into. And the guest opera singer adds something special to “The Egoism”.
I am so completely hooked on this album. I’ve been listening to it pretty much nonstop for the past week or so. The trick is to play it on a really good sound system (to bring out every single nuance), and if you have the mp3s, to play them without gaps in between. Remember, the whole album is clearly intended to be a seamless death metal symphony of sorts. I had to merge all the mp3s into a single file to get the seamless transition that I desired.
Anyway, hope these guys get the recognition they richly deserve. Fleshgod, if you’re reading this, please make more of this sort of fantastic music and don’t listen to the naysayers. The only small improvement I would humbly suggest is to try and get a real orchestra to play with you instead of using keyboards. If Septic Flesh can pull it off, so can you – and your music is far more deserving of a real orchestra than Septic Flesh’s.