Style: Black Metal, Death Metal, Progressive Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Emperor, Enslaved, Dissection
Review by: Christopher
Country: US-NY
Release date: 4 November, 2022
It took a police investigation, two exorcisms, and several thousands dollars in crime-scene clean up fees, but when we finally sorted out the basement of The Progressive Subway offices, we turned it into an archive room. We don’t use it much—prog metal reviewing doesn’t require much research beyond listening and perusing bandcamp pages—but for this review, I had to go down into the musty, cobwebbed stacks and pick out an old Betamax of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic: The Thing. Why? Because Fliege’s latest release One Day They’ll Wonder What Happened Here is a sonic retelling of the cosmic horror celluloid masterpiece.
These black metal cineastes from Queens previously paid tribute to David Cronenberg’s The Fly and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on their debut and sophomore records respectively. And on a split with Wurmteeth (who opted to honour Grey’s Anatomy on their half, believe it or not) they eulogised Tetsuo: The Iron Man.
I imagine most black metal fans will be familiar with the plot of The Thing, but for the uninitiated, the basic premise is that the scientists at a US research station in the Antarctic rescue a husky from a pair of crazed Norwegians trying to shoot it. They shut it in with their other huskies, only for the dog to peel apart in the nastiest way possible into some pulsating, tentacled, fleshy mass of grotesquery. The titular Thing, a thawed out alien parasite, has struck and now terrorises the facility. Quietly residing in the DNA of its victims, it only reveals itself when it wishes to, at which point the physiognomy of the unsuspecting host becomes its playground. Isolated in the most desolate place on Earth, the scientists—among them Kurt Russell looking like he’s trying out for The Bee Gees—are trapped with it.
Naturally, black metal lends itself to such a subject, and this is competent black metal with decent production, with a solid amount of death metal for good measure. Fliege throw in a load of synth which ably replicates the tone of that used in Ennio Morricone’s eerie, minimalist score, which is overtly referenced here and there by the band. But rather than echoing Morricone’s rather spare composition, Fliege opt for a more rousing character which works oddly well. The Thing is a taut, paranoid film, but One Day They’ll Wonder What Happened Here is an homage, and its epic moments feel reverential, a horror fan’s panegyric in musical form. In addition to worship, Fliege lift some samples from the film: “The Thaw” opens with the same whirr of helicopter blades that opens the film, and “Jaws of Life” features the screams from the iconic defibrillator scene.
Where Fliege really excel is on the lyrical front, as is often the case for cosmic horror loving bands, towing the line between traditional Lovecraftian writing (“the cervix of extinction dilates/put Darwin’s head on the stake”), and campy ‘80s horror cheese (“What once was is no more, once certain unsure, the man you know is gone, get the flamethrower”). Wading into the film’s implications with regards to identity, biology, and the overarching existential threat, One Day They’ll Wonder What Happened Here operates as a retelling-cum-meta-analysis that proves oddly compelling. But if that’s not your thing, they also manage to name-drop another Carpenter classic, the criminally underrated In the Mouth of Madness.
Peter Witteger’s harsh vocals are half standard black metal, half Tommy Giles barks, and they cleanly provide the narrative thrust. The clean vocals are pretty weak, and yet I always enjoyed their contributions—I wish they were stronger, but their presence nevertheless feels necessary to the success of the compositions, and the softer sections they usually turn up in provide a chilly contrast, effectively evoking the isolation of the Antarctic cold. While there’s a lot to like on this album, there’s not much to love. All the ingredients are here, but the epic moments aren’t as epic as they should be, the forays into other genres aren’t as intrepid as they should be.
One Day They’ll Wonder What Happened Here is a very solid black metal that charms with loving homage to its filmic inspiration. It’s not the most groundbreaking album out there, and it has flaws, but the flourishes of creativity, especially the atmospheric synth work and the forays out of the traditional black/death metal sphere, do the necessary heavy lifting required for it to stand apart from the crowd. The Thing is a perfect horror film, One Day They’ll Wonder What Happened Here isn’t a perfect black metal album, but it is fun, particularly if you’re a fan of its cinematic antecedent. Why don’t you just… listen to it for a while… see what happens?
Recommended tracks: Man is the Warmest Place to Hide, Jaws of Life, Sight for the Snowblind
You may also like: Hoth, Wormwitch, Oubliette, Dynfari
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Fliege is:
– Pete Witteger (vocals)
– Coleman Bentley (guitar, bass, synth, clean vocals, drum programming)
0 Comments