The Lazarus Breed

God everything on this album takes fucking forever. Is the first track really less than five minutes long? From my perspective it took about six months- let's not even get started on the not one but TWO eight plus minute tracks. This is a constant problem throughout 'The Lazarus Breed'; the band takes forever to get anywhere, and when they arrive, it's usually a hundred times less interesting than anticipated.

Fleshmould is a death metal band- of sorts. Frankly, a lot of the riffs seem more carved from a traditional heavy metal or prog mold than death metal itself, despite all the double bass runs and hearty growls. It's also rather slow music; I honestly can't remember if a blast beat is ever used over the course of the album, and the tempo never really rises above a still rather moderate midpace. This is kind of an interesting novelty, and it has worked for bands in the past- nary a blast to be found on 'Slowly We Rot', right? I think the closest they get is a fast thrash beat on 'Eternal Shifting Portals', which is immediately dropped for more aimless prog noodling.

The riffing style on this album is perplexing, being a seemingly random mixture of tremolo riffs like very early Cannibal Corpse, somewhat melodic, proggy leads, and some Meshuggah-style off-time post-thrash chugging. The combination is rather unsavory, frankly; when the band's not chugging around in various configurations they're usually playing very simple, melodramatically melodic riffs that don't tend to go anywhere. The music is also verse/chorus based, which is fine- for music much catchier than this stuff. Fleshmould's music is frankly so aimless and circular it makes literally everything seem boring. Yeah, I tapped my foot to a couple of the chunkier riffs, but really where are any of these songs going?

'The Lazarus Breed' is a bad album, but I'll give it credit for being bad in a highly unusual way for a death metal release. This is definitely one of the more interesting and odd bad albums I own. That being said, yeah, it still sucks and I'd rather listen to a good album instead. I think I've made it through this CD in one sitting once.

Belgium’s Fleshmould are a somewhat technical death metal outfit that seem to manage only the occasional flash of brilliance to bring some interest back to the listener.

The Lazarus Breed is an ambitious album in some respects in that it does make an attempt to integrate different styles into a seamless concoction but I found that often this made the album sound disjointed. In fact this mixing of styles and ideas often made me feel that the songs were just rambling for the sake of rambling, with riff being chucked on top of riff with no clear direction of where things were supposed to heading. There are a couple of songs on this disc that run for 8 minutes or so but could most likely have run for half the time.

I found the production and overall mix to be quite lacking, with the production sounding quite dull and lifeless and the mix slanted too far in the favour of the drums. Whilst it wasn’t un-listenable, it wasn’t able to convey any emotion at all and felt unintentionally cold and dreary. It has all the hallmarks of a home recording and few signs that it was actually recorded in a professional studio.

All is not as bad as it seems for the band though as there were several sections of the album that I really enjoyed such as the melodic Eternal Shifting Portals or the guns blazing Structures in Decline. And even though for the most part I did find the songs to be disjointed and too flooded with ideas, there were always good riffs to be found throughout them which is why I was so disappointed overall with the album.

Fleshmould have the goods to become a strong band internationally because they do have technical skill and interesting ideas but until they can really focus that skill into writing songs that have a better flow and direction I will be giving them a miss.

(Previously submitted to themetalforge.com)

Fleshmould is one of the uprising Death Metalbands in Belgium. ‘The Lazarus Breed’ is their third full-length, released through Shiver Records. Shiver records is the new label which raise from the dead LSP-Company. They have already released quite some good releases this year (only Belgian metal!), like Battalion, Axamenta, Panchrysia and Iconoclasm. Fleshmould plays good old Death Metal with some great technical skills.

This release simply sounds marvellous. The CD was recorded in the ShumCot Soundlab, property of band-member ReinieR Schenk, so it’s needless to say they could mix and master this to perfection. The sound quality is very important for this kind of releases, every instrument has to come out just enough to create the heavy atmosphere and to stress the little technical interferences which make an album something special.. They’ve done this unbelievably good!

I must say I’m happy to find the track ‘Apocalyptus Rexx’ on this album. It’s a song from the EP ‘Apocalyptus Rexx’ and in my eyes a real masterpiece from Fleshmould. Great riffs, cool tempo changes, some scream-along pieces on the chorus and of course the little extra’s like abnormal guitar sounds or drum rolls. A song I play over and over again!

‘The Lazarus Breed’ is off course more than just this song. I enjoyed it from beginning to end! This is one of those bands who raise the level of Death Metal without losing the powerful roots of the genre. I hope they’ll get the attention and promotion needed because this CD deserves its recognition beyond the Belgian borders!

Review written for http://users.telenet.be/odium/