Style: Technical Death Metal, Deathcore (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Archspire, Psycroptic, Beyond Creation, The Zenith Passage
Country: Indiana, United States
Release date: 24 Jan 2025
Ah, paradise. Whether it conjures a relaxing day on the beach or an invigorating escape into the mountains, ‘paradise’ is a word that is universally evocative. On latest album Painted Paradise, Indiana-based band Fleshbore lay bare their interpretation of the word, and it looks like… technical death metal? Are we sure we have the right album here? The ethereal landscape and gentle rolling hills that grace Painted Paradise’s album cover read closer to Alcest than Necrophagist, but I suppose it’s not my place to judge a book by its cover alone. Let’s investigate what exactly paradise looks like for these Indiana boys.
A title like Painted Paradise may conjure pleasant vistas and beautiful melodicism, but Fleshbore’s latest output is anything but, relying on chaotic tech death as its base: higher-register guitars run back-and-forth relays across scales (“Inadequate”); drums are played at such a speed that counting the subdivisions is an exercise in futility (“Painted Paradise”); and room is made in the madness for at least one bass solo (“Wandering Twilight”). At this point, it’s cliché to invoke Archspire when discussing tech death, but Fleshbore’s style comes the closest of anyone I’ve heard—the rhythmic triplets and harsh rap flows that spontaneously emerge in Michael O’Hara’s vocal delivery instantly conjure Oli Peters and the neoclassical bent in Michael McGinley and Cole Chavez’s more melodic guitar moments evoke Dean Lamb on ketamine.1 Additionally, Painted Paradise is tinged with deathcore sensibilities thanks to the inclusion of chuggy riffs (“Target Fixation”), bone-crushing breakdowns (“The World”), and gurgly low gutturals (“Setting Sun”).
Painted Paradise is at its best when it’s able to temper its brutality with melody and catchiness: while many of the heavier passages sufficiently fill every fold in my brain, what really gives the album staying power is its tactful variation between soaring guitar licks and skull-crushing heaviness. “The Ancient Knowledge,” for example, opens with a jittering start-and-stop frenzy before launching into a variety of harsh vocal flows and ominous guitar riffs, gluing the track together with repeated ideas; “Wandering Twilight” follows suit, containing an immeasurably heavy instrumental break that gives the bass a prominent role before incorporating melody in its latter sections through a gorgeous guitar solo; and “Inadequate” sees the chuggier riffs transcend their role as a tool for brutality and variation, showcasing a myriad of two-ton grooves before interweaving itself with the track’s throng of compelling solos. “Laplace’s Game” is Painted Paradise’s star highlight, though, utilizing a bouncy vocal rhythm in its verses and aggressive guitar rhythmics alongside some of the album’s catchiest moments, remaining remarkably varied without losing the plot.
I would be remiss to not talk about Painted Paradise’s vocal performance: Michael O’Hara delivers a deluge of different vocal styles, ranging from mid-register Vektor-style shrieks to lower-pitched bellows and switching haphazardly to anything inbetween. The fun O’Hara is having is palpable on tracks like “The Ancient Knowledge,” “The World,” and “Laplace’s Game,” where his rapid-fire flow gets the opportunity to interplay with guitar melodies and counteract chuggy grooves. Even though his performance may veer on indiscriminate, the bevy of styles never feel out of place, in most cases augmenting the chaotic atmosphere established by Fleshbore’s instrumentation.
However, there is indeed trouble in Painted Paradise: Fleshbore are occasionally wont to fall into deathcore tropes I don’t particularly love. “Target Fixation” suffers the most from this, over-utilizing brutal chugs and executing guitar parts that are interesting for their technicality but aren’t necessarily fun to listen to. Moreover, it has some of my least favorite vocal performances, opening with an awkward flow and incorporating grating sustained gurgles later in the track. Additionally, Painted Paradise’s chaotic songwriting clashes with its lack of a clear point of view: tracks like “Inadequate” and “The World” are an absolute blast moment-to-moment but are hard to follow as whole pieces, and this combined with an uncertain link between the music, lyricism, and idiosyncratic album name and artwork leaves me with a nagging feeling of incompleteness by Painted Paradise’s end. It’s lots of fun, it’s undoubtedly brutal, but outside of its relentless grip on my intensity-craving lizard brain, there is a missing piece that ties Painted Paradise together.
Fleshbore showcase a lot of ambition on Painted Paradise, weaving together the melodicism and speed of tech death with the abject brutality of deathcore and distinguishing themselves with a neurotic-yet-playful vocal approach. Painted Paradise is a tight release full of excitement and brutality, but its chaos leaves me wanting a more direct point of view, and a couple of the performances are either a bit rough around the edges or aren’t cohesively integrated. If your idea of paradise is a tech-death assault that barrels through ideas with abandon, then I strongly encourage you to get lost in its watercolor brutality.
Recommended tracks: Laplace’s Game, The World, Wandering Twilight, The Ancient Knowledge
You may also like: Aseitas, Misanthropy, Carnosus, First Fragment, Ophidian I
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Fleshbore is:
– Michael McGinley (guitars)
– Cole Chavez (guitars)
– Michael O’Hara (vocals)
– Cole Daniels (bass)
– Robin Stone (session drums)
- Which is to say, at a standard tech-death metal pace. ↩︎
