Review by Saxy S for Frail Body - Artificial Bouquet (2024)

If I had a nickel for every time a reviewed an emo post-metal album in 2024, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's kind of weird that it's happened twice so far.

Artificial Bouquet is the second full length release from Illinois based post-metal band Frail Body. It's been getting a lot of critical attention and given the nature of the style of music that is on display, I can understand why. This is the sort of blow out your speakers, unintelligible post-metal that music critics love to eat up in the 21st century. However I find it mostly above average at best. If we were to compare this to the other emo post-metal album I've reviewed in 2024 (Infant Island Obsidian Wreath), Frail Body are doing more with the sound and creating some haunting atmosphere. Something about the just off tempo, slightly out-of-tune nature of "Runaway" has my engineering ears screaming at the speakers, but that song manages to find some kind of resolution that Infant Island could not approach.

The album uses intensity and bends it to the breaking point. Throughout Artificial Bouquet, Frail Body are testing the blackgaze waters of Deafheaven and White Ward, and have the compositional awareness (like those bands mentioned previously) to give their audience a break. The calming post-rock interludes at the beginning of "Critique Programme" and all of "Another Year Removed" compliment the punk and black metal assault that exists throughout the rest of the record and they are pulled off quite beautifully.

The issue is, like with Infant Island, the vocals are painfully lacking, but by no fault of the vocalist. Shaffer's vocals are piercing as if the pent up frustration they have is being fed to us without so much as a second draft. They sound like Shaffer's vocal chords would be ripped to shreds when the recording was over. But good luck trying to decipher anything that's being said without a lyric sheet! The artist that I kept being reminded of while listening to this was La Dispute (again). I kept thinking "wouldn't the absolute evisceration of the vocal chords here be so much more impactful if they had the cleaner production of Jordan Dreyer?" And it would fit alongside the instrumental production, as a few passages sound thin; another point in this records favour of sounding D.I.Y. with only one guitar tone instead of multitracking.

So while Artificial Bouquet is good, it's far from great. Frail Body created an album that had aspirations of an in house recording, and mostly succeeded. But when it comes to emotional type lyricism, it kind of defeats the purpose when you hide it in the back behind all of the other instrumentals. Once again, I refer to Unreqvited, who do not have conventional vocals and instead use them as another instrument. And this has worked wonders for them recently. I would love for bands like Infant Island and Frail Body to learn this and either give their vocalists space to express, or do away with lyrics altogether. 

Best Songs: Devotion, Refrain, Runaway, Horizon Line