Fleshgod Apocalypse - King (2016) Review

Breathing the soul of the slain in battle

In the old forum era and during the time of Fleshgod Apocalypse’s first years of activity, it was a joke how they “put a photo of their drummer on the cover of the Mafia EP”. Word was for the incredible percussion technician Francesco Paoli and how special his contribution was to the band’s debut full length-album Oracles in 2009, as well as the EP that followed - but that wasn’t the only aspect that made them stand out. Mixing the gut-punch immediacy of technical death metal with a classical flavor, the project was an ambitious experiment in synthesis from day one. Following a trajectory defined by increasing integration of these classical textures in Agony (2011), and even more so in Labyrinth (2013), the blood-stained tuxedo gang from Italy were traversing a familiar path when King dropped in 2016. 

The days of simply labeling them as a more symphonic version of Hour of Penance are gone, as King sits at the apex of the band’s expansion into multi-instrumental theatricality and a potent concept to go along with it. The record is conceived as an allegory in which the figure of the monarch is surrounded by traitors and false allies, striving to maintain his integrity as the world collapses from within into deceit and despair. Each track elaborates on a different character, yet it’s less personified and more a metaphorical frame representing human vices and fears, representing psychological forces of false loyalty that contribute to the ruler’s struggle and slow erosion. To me, King frames power as a moral burden, a target on the back that affects both inner compromises, and surrounding relationships, sometimes in ways quieter to be even noticeable. 

The album opens with “Marche Royale”, a purely orchestral prelude that signals the grand stage on which the drama will unfold. From the overture to the first proper track, “In Aeternum”, Fleshgod Apocalypse reveals true intentions with King and quickly moves on with what may attract as well as repel this release. Gargantuan hypes of orchestration on a dominating production, spacious riffing and blast beats, growls alongside the characteristic cleans already introduced in the previous two albums, as this one doesn’t shy away even from more operatic sections and is proud of its royal identity. Also here, here’s a largely deliberate center of gravity changeover towards the band’s symphonic muscle rather than death metal machinery, in a way that by now, the latter follows the former instead of the other way around. 

In this case, the orchestral groundwork remains compelling for the entirety of King, whether it’s keyboard layers or pure classical piano parts, while the pacing leans mostly to middle-paced territories. The ear is constantly pulled between bombast and sentimentality, but listening to the album constantly made me miss the earlier version of the band. We come across a mixture that feels like an alchemy that never quite settles, more fantasy score than concentrated metal, a work that’s well-thought and often thrilling, but definitely not directed to death metal (let alone techdeath) fans anymore. At the faster moments of “The Fool” or on “And the Vulture Beholds”, you’ll come across what Fleshgod Apocalypse is truly capable of, and an even clearer and more powerful example of this is the unrelenting piece “Mitra”, right in the middle of the album. 

Notable are also the featured operatic vocals by Veronica Bordacchini on a few pieces (“Cold As Perfection” and “Syphilis”), most notably on the full-on piano & vocal “Paramour (Die Leidenschaft bringt Leiden)”, where lyrics were taken from Goethe’s Trilogie der Leidenschaft (“Trilogy of Passion”). Jens Borgen’s (Soilwork, Powerwolf, Amon Amarth among many others) mixing provides King with a sound that's meticulous, lending the album a polished sheen that sits comfortably with its conceptual aims, as Fleshgod Apocalypse obviously wanted to enter expensive soundstages rather than meddle with the rawness of the underground. Equally thunderous arrangements are laid on “A Million Deaths”, but the repetitive grooves of, e.g. “Gravity” or “Healing Through War”, felt like a coherence fractures to me. 

It’s probably just me being unable to get over tracks like “Embodied Deception”, “In Honour of Reason” and “Thru Our Scars”, when Fleshgod Apocalypse could easily demolish the listener with complex technical death metal, compositionally often built around their monstrous drummer. They fantasized the choir and strings since then and made it reality before King, so it’s meaningless to complain about that specifically, but it still sharpens a certain contradiction to my mind. The clean singing aims for epic, operatic grandeur, as an attempt to inject melodic humanism into a work otherwise driven by relative ferocity, but to my ears it feels like a stylistic tremor that unsettles the foundation rather than enhances it. It’s not that the individual components are poor though- far from it. There are genuine moments of grandeur, dramatic depth, and instrumental virtuosity.   

Given the duration of the album, and the stretched build-up moments found in tracks like “Syphilis” and “Gravity”, King could end up being a tighter release and sometimes feels like the concept supersedes the music, yet it never casts a smaller shadow than its actual size. More tunes like “Mitra”, “And the Vulture Beholds” and of course “In Aeternum”, more instrumentals like the introduction or the self-titled closer, and generally moments when Fleshgod Apocalypse operates in high speeds are way more competent than their middle- or slower-paced counterparts. I’ll have to dig into Labyrinth (2013) and Veleno (2019) again to see if anything was changed or added to the recipe, and generally if the forceful angle of Oracles has been put to rest. Never mind me, a lot of people into modern metal will probably cherish this.

Release: February 5th, 2016 | Nuclear Blast Records
Rating: 3 out of 5 [Good]
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