Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed

What’s perhaps most striking about ‘Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed’ is how it makes us feel as if we have never heard progressive death metal played properly before. The foundational classics of the genre were certainly rich artistically, but they remain compelling in part as a study in musicians living beyond their means, not just for the Nocturnuses of the world, but even Atheist, Death, and Pestilence were wont to miss their mark either stylistically or technically at times.

The topography of progressive metal today presents a very different landscape, one where machinelike precision is the expected norm, crystalline mixes, adept, studied musicianship, flawless execution, and highly curated sound spaces are industry standard. Mundanity ensues. An audience gorging itself on such ruthlessly dense sterility has come to not only expect but celebrate progressive metal following certain formulas, meeting pre-agreed standards. The result is the exact opposite to what the ”progressive” credo implies. A circular, self contained environment where new ideas, surprises, mistakes, happy accidents, spontaneity, all are freeze-dried out of the process, fixing the genre in place.

Fleshvessel bypass this paralysis by approaching their craft from a slightly different angle. Here me out: progressive metal with programmed drums. You wouldn’t think it listening to Fleshvessel’s debut album, but such a thing is not only possible but almost indistinguishable from the real thing (for us philistines at least), and it must have taken fucking ages. But beyond this, the rich array of real instrumentation they apply to their craft from flutes, piano, harp, woodwinds, – beyond the high-fidelity sound of the bass and guitars – this is more in keeping with full blooded 70s progressive rock from the heyday of the genre.

The space ‘Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed’ occupies is every bit as curated as comparable progressive metal releases. But Fleshvessel come across as a progressive rock band that just happens to employ distorted guitars and vocals, and the occasional death metal riff by happenstance. They lean into the unpredictable, showy, outrageously over the top meanders of the genre’s creation myths with gusto. Given the quality of musicianship on display and the richness of the production, we know that this is an artist entirely in control of events, but they make a show of allowing their ability, ambition, and zeal to run away with itself, giving rise to a theatrical and over the top display of music for its own sake in a way that would delight prog fans.

From a linear thread, one musician will pick up on the smallest tangent or accent and wrest the piece in that direction, until the entire composition has been forced into a violent left turn, weaving its way around a multiplicity of divergent threads before pulling itself back together. An experience akin to having a conversation with someone laying out multiple concurrent trains of thought at once.

But first and foremost, ‘Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed’ is an album of artistically (as opposed to technically) orientated compositions. There is none of the disjointed linearity found in traditional garden variety progressive metal. They follow any idea, however incidental, through to a usually painful conclusion, but there are ideas, there is an overarching logical order guiding the hand of this music. This is in stark contrast to much contemporary prog metal that favours slick, self aware presentations, a pretence of dense esoterica ultimately boiling down to convoluted platforms for showcasing musicianship within strictly defined borders. Fleshvessel, for all their bombast and willingness to indulge their every whim, are therefore a welcome breath of fresh air in a field where novelty without context is fast becoming an immovable sterility.

Originally published at Hate Meditations