I absolutely love over-the-top symphonic stuff in metal but I just couldn't get into this. The mix wouldn't be a dealbreaker to me but the guitar just gets so damn muddy sounding. What kills it is the lack of dynamics. Incorporating movie score elements is a cool idea to heighten drama or add another melodic layer but the drama is missing since it never builds to anything and it basically just overrides the other instruments.

A couple things though to the detractors to this track; the drums have ALWAYS sounded horrible in this band. That opening drum fill on "In Honor of Reason" made me freakin' cringe the first time I heard. Great album, terrible drum sound. Also, Scrambled Defuncts is damn terrible.

Fast, orchestral and speedy metal music? I might have a three-way slot with Immolation and Suffocation as my top DM pick this year if the rest of the album is in any way a continuation of that clip.

I can't say that I'm excited in anyway by this release. Best case scenario: They will come back to their senses and drop the pseudo-orchestral boring and uninspired death metal of Agony to comeback to their roots. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING they did before Agony is better. Including the previous project Tyrannic Ethical Reconstruction, that some of the actual members of Fleshgod Apocalypse took part in.

Oracles was a masterpiece. Great rhythm, great leads... and most important was that they had an actual tech death approach to classical music, rather than a Dimmu Borgir pseudo-orchestral keyboard fest with boring rhythm guitars to make it "metal"

Worst case scenario: It's going to be worst than Agony. And that's possible. See... Agony is bad mainly because it came after Oracles. It's not has bad as I made it sound before, but it's boring and lacks personnality for sure. If they make it worst than Agony, than I figure it will just mean that FA is dead...

Hackled in Gore is the best thing they've done and the best thing they'll ever do.

As for Fleshgod Apocalypse, I really love Agony but the new song is not awesome. I will likely grow to enjoy it in time, as that is the case with me.

Jesus this thread is starting to sound like the new track, a furious onslaught of instruments(opinions), with varying degrees of sense.

Now at the cost of someone coming with some snotty, misplaced foot-in-mouth comment, I must say I really did hope they wouldn't actually make the guitars less audible this time around. For everyone just tuning in, I was saying earlier that most people are criticizing the album too harshly just because of the poor mix. I never disagreed that the guitars were a little low in the mix, just that they weren't completely inaudible and that the shift of focus away from full on technical leads didn't mean the songwriting was worse by default.

I, as I assume everyone else who enjoyed Agony and even some who enjoyed Oracles and Mafia enough, was really expecting them to learn from the mistakes in production and come out with an album that combined the best of all their elements, as they stated they would. I don't mind the obvious lack in dynamics for a single track, it's great to have full on brutal tracks like this on an album as long as there are some other tracks with more variety and a progression throughout, but there were definitely parts of this song that didn't fit together well, especially the beginning, and hopefully it's just the youtube quality, but by god, now I am really struggling to hear the guitars. They must have fucking headphones on with the guitar tracks alone while listening to the rest of the song from a system in the room if they think that this is their "best" production yet.

I really still don't see the resemblance to Dimmu Borgir besides the fact that they use symphonics heavily. The songwriting is a billion times better(generally speaking) and it's a lot more aggressive and brutal.

@NecropsY Man I know what you are trying to say, although in retrospect I guess I was also going down the wrong route with that argument, but you really have a very shitty way of saying it, which should be pretty evident from the responses you are getting.

@Everyone basically saying they're trying to sell out What the fuck are you guys talking about? Are symphonics somehow more appealing to the metal community at large? Or the lack of guitar levels? I guess most of the people in this category are also the people who think they sound like Dimmu Borgir. Most of the bands I can think of that have sold out have actually curbed their brutal elements or removed them entirely. What exactly is the "pop" factor in the music here? Clean singing? Please...

Anyway, the track isn't awful, but it could've been really good if the guitars were audible, I expect... I'll definitely keep my eye on how this progresses, but someone should seriously let them know about the guitar levels now.

They aren't similar to Dimmu Borgir in the way they sound, but rather in the way they approach metal. They are slowly replacing all the diversified guitar riffs by a shitload of keys that are supposed to make up for the lack of interresting riffing. Before, with Oracles, the classical music elements were played by the guitar and the way they mixed tech death riffs with these classical elements was impressive and sounded good and creative. With Agony, it just feels wrong. We've all seen this before. Of course it's FA, so the guitar are still all over the place, but not in the strong rhythm and lead duo way, but in a boring backing element supposed to add agressivity to all the overly "orchestral" keys.

And yes, this kind of music does appeal more to the masses (or generaly amateur metal audience) than their Oracles style or even of the style they had in their previous projects, no matter how much more interresting these were. When they released Agony, I saw a bunch of death metal amateurs starting to talk about them... melodeath kids with basically no interest for anything that doesn't scream "HEY! LISTEN TO MY CATCHY MELODY!" right off at the beginning of the album.

See, I like the fact that they're not dropping the symphonics and going back to the more traditional sound on Oracles. I love Oracles to death, and it's pretty handily the best thing the band has done so far, but trying to do symphonic brutal tech death is just something that damn near nobody does, and as a result, Agony is infinitely more interesting than whatever Oracles Vol II could have been. Agony was flawed to shit, and from the sounds of this teaser track, Labyrinth hasn't really addressed any of the problems (terrible mix, ill fitting and subpar cleans (they were fine on Mafia, but totally overused on Agony and it just sounded like he was way out of his league most of the time), no real integration between orchestrations and metal, et cetera), but at the very least it was an interesting idea. I like that they're making this their niche, and the fact remains that Oracles is going to be looked back on as the black sheep in their discography before they "found their way". So for people who love Oracles and hate Agony... sorry, I don't really know what to tell you. That sound is done, this is the new Fleshgod. I'm not saying y'all have to like it or accept it, but hating the track for merely having the symphonics in the first place or not really sounding like the first album is just completely missing the point, and it's similar to the people who were upset that Super Collider didn't sound like Rust in Peace. You think the symphonics are poorly done and the production is shit? Absolutely fair, I even agree with you.

And for the other side of the debate, not everybody who dislikes new Fleshgod dislikes it because it's all orchestral now. In fact I'd say that's a drastic minority. Most people point to the awful mixing job or the poor integration, not the fact that they're there at all. My first paragraph was really just addressing a fringe contingent, and the people playing the Open Minded brigade need to understand that that's what it is, just a fringe pocket. I've seen very few bad criticisms in this thread, most of them are totally valid, and the fact that I'm defending the band despite feeling like they still haven't really figured it out yet is unfairly lumping me in with you whackos.

The real point of all this is that we have scores upon scores of bands doing what the band did on Oracles, and very, very few doing what they did on Agony. It doesn't seem like they've improved a whole lot with Labyrinth here, but I'm glad they didn't cave to all the fans screaming about how they need to do Oracles again. I hope they stick with this path, I just hope they... ya know, get better at it.

Thank you 1

Thank you 2

Ugh...

Goddamn it Fleshgod Apocalypse. I actually rather enjoyed 'Agony', faults and all but this? This is turning out to be a clipped to shit symphonic clusterfuck. I sincerely hope the rest of the album is MUCH better than this. It should be anyways because Fleshgod Apocalypse is certainly capable of a lot more.

If the whole album is this ill-conceived, at least SepticFlesh is still going strong.

Yep. Crap mixing is crap. I actually don't mind the thought of extreme symphonic metal, but the mixing was the reason I'm in the boat of Agony being meh compared to Oracles and Mafia.

Wait, wait... You think Oracles was LESS original than Agony? There is nothing special going on with Agony. The keyboards are way too dominant to make efficient death metal, especially if you are going for brutal tech death. Remember, this isn't a melodic death metal album they were attempting here... But they still managed to make it so melody focused and to draw all the attention to the keyboard leads, and make the rhythm guitars almost irrelevant (not that the riffs were utterly bad in anyway) except for the brutality factor and with a few tech riffs here and there to remind us that this is still a death metal act.

I've listened to the track Elegy, and I feel that there is an attempt to mix the orchestration with a more Oracles feel. It feels weird, especially with the production... I don't really like the production of the track... but I like that they are attempting not to be the Dimmu Borgir of death metal... like they are on Agony. I know you guys don't like the comparison with Dimmu Borgir, because DB's recent work is abysmal crap, so let's try with bands like Rhapsody Of Fire or whatever. Anyway, my point is not that they are bad, but rather that they had a great and unique approach to death metal with Oracles. It was real, it felt real. It was death metal with classical music elements played by the guitars. You want to throw in keyboards and orchestration? Fine! But don't let it replace the guitars.

And can you name another band that did that in this fashion? This isn't about good or bad, or what people consider to be good things to do in death metal, it is about originality, which can be good or bad.

I don't think there is much other bands playing symphonic technical brutal death metal. That's not my point. Replacing guitar leads by keyboards and delaying the guitars to "playing brutal and fast stuff" is something we've seen quite enough. Of course, Fleshgod Apocalypse are still highly recognizable on Agony, and they are probably the only death metal band doing what they're doing at the time, yes. I don't think we need this, though....

I don't know about that. We've certainly seen lots and lots of different symphonic metal bands (mostly black metal though) and maybe a couple of death metal ones (think Septic Flesh) but the majority of these bands are keeping the two styles quite separate. Fleshgod has to be one of the first if not the first to try and really mesh the two genres together. I'm talking about really intertwining the two until it stops being black/death metal with just symphonics on top of it. I'm not saying that they're doing a good job at it though. I'm not that knowledgeable on symphonic metal and I'm also not a fan, so I could be wrong about them being pioneers or something, but I get how some people see them as such. There is something decent hiding inside Fleshgod, they just have to find a way to get it out.

Okay, but that's exactly what my point was. Notice that I never said Agony was great at any point throughout this thread or the history of the universe since it was released, my point is that there's potentially nobody else doing what they're doing right now, and so for that reason alone I'd like to see them continue trying to forge this path and hopefully they manage to figure out their songwriting.

I normally complain about bands not playing to their strengths and preach about how innovation alone doesn't make a band more worthwhile than an unoriginal band with great songwriting, and clearly Fleshgod's strength is more in line with Oracles and their innovation is pretty poorly handled, but the modern brutal tech death scene is preposterously flooded. It's completely saturated, every possible angle has been accounted for and there are scored of bands who do it very well, and so for that I'm making an exception on my usual stances because there are oodles of bands who can fill the void Fleshgod left (and it's not like Oracles is going anywhere anyway) and I'm interested to hear this style done in a way that isn't frustrating as hell.

A new trailer for the record with a snippet of some new music from the album. I heard the guitar quite a bit better in this one, even underneath the band talking about the album.

Definitely sounds better than the first single but I still can't get over how thin and plastic the overall mix is. Why is it so difficult for Fleshgod Apocalypse to get this right?

Well, with the very little we've heard so far, it's not half-bad. It sounds like they are trying to have actual death metal riffing rather than the heavy/brutal filling job they gave the guitars for Agony.

Since we're on the topic of symphonic death metal, what do you guys think of Septic Flesh and MaYaN?

BTW, that newer video gave me higher hopes than that song did.

I love the last couple Septicflesh albums. MaYaN is pretty good too, although Mark Jansen's penchant for writing really stupid lyrics carried over in full swing to that band. Still, I can't fault any group that has Floor Jansen in it.

They could have had something going on for them but it ends up being like a "deathed up" version of Epica sans the power metal and the females singing for the most part. Really disappointing...

Septicflesh are a no-brainer.

PS: Just had a brain freeze here, they do have female vocals... I'm getting old!

I never really cared for Revolution DNA but I can say that I have enjoyed everything else Septic Flesh has released

Sumerian Daemons is a sick album no doubt about it

The sample from that video is infinitely better than the new single.
The mix still sounds a bit sterile, though.

With that said, however, I'm far more hopeful for the album than I was.

For all we know the upload of the single could've been just rendered badly. The trailer sounds so much better than the single that it's not even funny, and some of my will to listen to this album has come back.

Same here

Holy shit. That's a massive improvement over Elegy (which wasn't THAT bad, just meh, in my opinion). That's exactly how it should sound. The jab towards detractors of Agony and Elegy is fairly amusing too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZiA2TrWtpo this is for another new song called minotaur.

As awful as the first song. Also that ''spoken part'' is the worst thing ever.

I thought Minotaur would be a bit more brutal of a song

i find it more of a slow song lol

The song is about 80,000 times better than the last one, but the production is still really distracting from the overall package.

people sure do love to hate this band... lol

So because we levy criticisms against it that means we hate the band? I love Fleshgod; Agony was my #1 album of 2011. This album though is shaping to both not be anywhere near as good as that album, but also quite bad too.

Two strikes Fleshgod Apocalypse. Things don't bode well for this new album at all...

This has to be the most plastic production job I've heard since 'Dingir'. I don't praise Rings Of Saturn very often but at least they had the wherewithal to not slap pro-tools symphonics over their lifeless tech-death wankathon...and, is it just me or are 'Minotaur's guitar riffs horribly out of time with everything else? Maybe I'm not hearing it right but it's nigh impossible to make much out. The vocals are certainly worse than on 'Elegy'; that spoken word section is almost as bad as Dallas' vocals on 'At The Gate Of Sethu'.

So far, the only thing 'Labyrinth' has successfully done is make me want to listen to SepticFlesh. Hell, even watching the David Bowie film would be a better use of my time.



Actually, I've been a huge fan of Fleshgod Apocalypse since I first heard 'Oracles'. I'm one of the weirdos that actually LIKES 'Agony'. This album is gearing up to be a massive failure though and it's better to be brutally honest than keep pretending everything's peachy. Going back to Nile for a second, I'm still a fan of their work but I can say with all sincerity that 'At The Gate Of Sethu' is one of the worst death metal albums of the past five years. Hopefully their next full length is a proper follow-up to 'Those Whom The Gods Detest'.

It's still too early to call 'Labyrinth' either way but so far, it's god awful, which is a real shame. At least Hour Of Penance are still amazing...

Well im not gonna make any real judgments about this album untill i hear it for like 10 - 20 spins in a row

i think Agony is fantastic and while i like Oracles id say its not the masterpiece everyone makes it out to be -
i dont wanna pick apart Oracles but how unfitting are thoes "soundclip" orechestrial parts that do nothing but distract
and they picked some of the most overused clips in classical music

i mean the intro and track 3 outro - thats just so rediculously laughable

track 8 has some really horrible slam parts and horrible vocals to go along with it

... like i said i didnt wanna pick the album apart but its not without its flaws

and everyone who says Agony has shitty production Oractles has all the same flaws just minus the orchestral parts over the top of it


-
Now shifting topics about Nile - i think (In their darkened shrines is the best thing they have done by far ) the first album is pritty good also

but nile makes huge missteps and the "nile" fans are so hardcore they just swollow anything carl and co shit out

i think nile stopped being good directly after Shrines -

they tried so hard to make Annihlation marketable and riff wise the album was all over the place - the only good song was Heratic and heratic had the only good guitar solos

the song Annihlation was god awefull and didnt fit the bands sound at all, and user mae eat ra -is one of the worst songs iv ever heard in metal

and yes Dallas is one hell of a shitty vocalist, karl is 2, the 2 allways hid behind decent to good vocalists / the guy on black seeds and the guy on shrines

and dont get me startted on george - he may be fast but hes not very intresting

Oracles is overated its hardly a masterpiece
so im not sure why everyone thinks Oracles has better riffs then Agony
there turned up in the mix more but
i still take Agony over Oracles
go ahead and throw your stones

" that 'At The Gate Of Sethu' is one of the worst death metal albums of the past five years."

i couldn't agree more, see we don't disagree on everything

Alright, I have almost no experience with symphonic metal of any kind. I believe the only band in my collection with "symphonic" in their M-A genre description is Nightwish, and I only started listening to them recently.

But dammit, I kind of like this "Minotaur" song. I can't really dispute the naysayers' points, because most of the criticisms people are offering I either agree with (not a fan of those vocals that come in after 3 minutes) or have no opinion on (never heard Oracles or Agony, so can't compare). I don't know, the song just has this hypnotic quality that sucks me in, even if it doesn't make me air-guitar to any particular killer riffs.

Ahahaha, this thread is so funny. People are acting like Fleshgod was their 10 year long girlfriend who just broke up with them or something.

The new track is too slow for me. Not bad, but there's better. I only liked one (The Egoism) of the 2 slow tracks (The Egoism and The Forsaking) off Agony and that's only because it had an outro with 300bpm tradional blast beats and some awesome evil phrygian dominant tremolo picking.

The new song rules. Very "The Egoism"-like, only better. Which is great. Interesting that a slower song is used as one of the opening tracks, rather than somewhere in middle. I think this album is going to be quite varied.

Also, that "spoken part" isn't really uncommon with FGA.. I don't see how it could be the "worst thing ever." Its cheesy, I get that. But really, what part of Greek Mythology isn't? This is a concept album after all.