Review by Daniel for Fleshgod Apocalypse - Oracles (2009)

I can still very clearly remember my mindset upon returning to the metal scene in 2009 after a decade of electronic music indulgence. I’d grown tired of the club scene in a similar way to how I’d done with the metal one around 1997/98 & just wanted to hear something genuinely brutal again so my first moves were to see what my beloved brutal death metal subgenre had been up to since I’d last been involved with it which led me very quickly to the Italians who were making the most brutal music the world had ever heard to the time (well… shortly after checking out the latest efforts from old faves like Suffocation & Dying Fetus anyway). One of the releases that particularly blew my socks off was the debut album from Rome’s wonderfully named Fleshgod Apocalypse whose debut full-length “Oracles” offered some of the most relentless music I’d ever encountered, only with a twist or two along the way. Fleshgod Apocalypse would go on to make some fairly significant musical adjustments that would see them becoming more & more of a challenge for me in the years to come but “Oracles” excited me & saw me giving it regular spins every time I needed an adrenaline rush over the next few months. It’s been ages since I’ve listened to it though so let’s see how it’s aged.

Perhaps the biggest feather in the cap of “Oracles” is its presentation. I simply adore the cover artwork which utilizes a striking colour scheme to enhance an already attractive image. The production job is equally impressive though, perhaps even more so given just how hard it must have been to achieve this sort of clarity amidst some of the most relentless blasting you’ll ever encounter. Sure, bassist Paolo Rossi isn’t done any favours by the mix which is hardly unusual for a death metal release but the guitars are presented with supreme precision. Legendary extreme metal drummer Mauro Mercurio’s drums are certainly heavily triggered & do sound a obviously artificial when isolated in the mix but it works well for a release that’s as technically demanding & high paced as this one is.

Some of you would likely be aware of Fleshgod Apocalypse through their bombastic symphonic death metal releases from the 2010’s, particularly their popular 2011 sophomore album “Agony” (which time has seen me quite liking after overcoming some initial concerns) but the band kicked off their recording career with a couple of releases that sound a little more traditional & can now be seen as somewhat transitional even though they were Fleshgod Apocalypse’s first proper releases. What we receive from their initial effort is an extremely brutal & extraordinarily relentless release that keeps a foot in both the technical death metal & brutal death metal camps in a similar way to bands like Hour of Penance, Nile or Origin while also throwing around some neoclassical influences without fully taking the plunge like they’d do over the next couple of years. There’s not anything especially symphonic in Fleshgod Apocalypse’s metal material at this stage in their evolution but there’s definitely some attempts to use classical music as a compositional tool from the guitarists with the solos being entirely neoclassically focused. There are also four or five quite accomplished classical interludes positioned at key locations within the tracklisting & these serve a very definite purpose given the aural battery the listener is subjected to via the metal material.

So how does it all work? Well, I’m a big fan of well executed brutal death metal so I find the flat-chat, pedal-to-the-metal stuff to be nothing short of exhilarating. Hired gun Mercurio (Hour of Penance/Hideous Divinity) is unbelievably fast & his endurance is almost super-human so for someone that’s obsessed with elite-level extreme drumming “Oracles” almost falls into the novelty category (although admittedly band leader Francesco Pauli would one-up him on the next album with arguably some of the most savagely brutal drumming ever recorded). The limiting factor here though is that I find neoclassical guitar work to be at odds with the intended aura of the death metal sound. There’s just something that doesn’t sit all that comfortably with me which sees most tracks including parts that aren’t exactly as I would wish. Still, there’s a lot to love about “Oracles” with Pauli’s crushing death growls & precision riffage being combined with Mercurio’s mind-blowing fury to create some of death metal’s most over the top material.

Fleshgod Apocalypse would push the neoclassicisms one step further on their 2010 “Mafia” E.P. before cruising head-first into symphonic territory for 2011’s “Agony” sophomore album & have never looked back. Personally though, I still find this debut album to be the most appealing inclusion in the band’s back catalogue & it’s always serves me very well indeed when I’m looking for the ultimate dose of adrenaline-fueled intensity.