Structures of Death

Fleshcrawl's Structures of Death was an album that got recommended to me by the iTunes store based on the other albums that I'd been buying. I have to say that I was definately not disappointed. Europse seems to be particularly good at turning out excellent death metal acts, and this is one of them.

Fleshcrawl's music sounds like early American death metal bands like Death, Obituary, and Deicide but with some of Sweden's melodic influences thrown in. In fact, if you leave out the melodic aspect of their sound, than Structures of Death sounds exactly like old school American death metal. The end result is a band that sounds a lot like Swedish death metal band Dismember, who had to have had some influence on Fleshcrawl.

The guitars play heavy death metal riffs accompanied by beautiful guitar solos and a nice melody to boot. The style varies from fast paced songs like the title track, "Fleshcult," "Written in Blood," and "War of the Dead," to slower, mid paced songs like "Into the Fire," and "Spirit Dressed in Black." The bass is clearly audible on the album, but doesn't really do much other than follow the guitar around.

The vocals though do seem to be subpar and Gross's vocals sound hoarsed, like he needs to stop and drink a glass of water. Musically that's the only real downside to this album. But the main flaw with Structures of Death is the production that went into the album. The recording sounds really dull, like a painting that over time the fine details have faded away.

Other than that Structures of Death is a beautiful album to listen too, particularly if you imagine that it's just an instrumental track and ignore the vocals.

Fleshcrawl is a band that prides itself on evoking the "old-school death metal sound", and they manage to pull that off well... for the most part. Although slightly melodic elements were present in their previous releases, (which were otherwise strictly old-school death metal) the melody of Structures of Death is apparent as soon as you start listening to it, harkening back to classic Dismember albums like 'Massive Killing Capacity'.

Make no mistake, Structures of Death IS NOT a melodic death metal album, or a progressive, technical or symphonic death metal album for that matter. All the aspects of OSDM are present: The low-pitched, "agonized" guitars, the deep growls, the gory lyrics, etc.

Speaking of the vocals... they seem to have dropped dramatically in quality since Made of Flesh. Although Sven Gross is still an expert at high-pitched death metal shrieks, he seems to have forgotten how to growl in a way that doesn't bring to mind a fat, mentally retarded man gargling maple syrup.

The guitar work, on the other hand, is excellent. Fleshcrawl's unique guitar voice makes the guitars sound almost as if they are in pain, and the painful atmosphere is perpetually present through the droning intros to the chainsaw-like solos. The riffs are masterfully written, and the guitars alone are what make Structures of Death a passable album.

Fleshcrawl doesn't do anything particularly innovative with Structures of Death, as they seem to be content just playing death metal in the Swedish style. That's fine with me, because they do it well.