FLESHCRAWL — Into the Catacombs of Flesh (review)

FLESHCRAWL — Into the Catacombs of Flesh album cover Album · 2019 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
UMUR
"Into the Catacombs of Flesh" is the ninth full-length studio album by German death metal act Fleshcrawl. The album was released through Apostasy Records in November 2019. It´s been 12 years since the release of the predeceding album "Structures of Death" (2007), so it´s fair to say that "Into the Catacombs of Flesh" is a comeback release for Fleshcrawl. Three out of five members remain from the lineup who recorded "Structures of Death (2007)", but longstanding guitarist Mike Hanus has been replaced by Slobodan Stupar and bassist Nico Scheffler has been replaced by Manu Markowski. The only remaining original member of the band is drummer Bastian Herzog.

Stylistically the material on "Into the Catacombs of Flesh" won´t surprise anyone familiar with the preceding releases by Fleshcrawl. This sounds pretty much like they´ve sounded since album number two ("Impurity" from 1994), when they changed their original death metal style with doom metal leanings, towards a more melodic old school death metal style strongly influenced by the Swedish Stockholm sound and especially Dismember. The opening title track immediately sets the stage and it´s impossible not to think of Dismember when listening to that track. Fortunately the next track is a little different and doesn´t reek as much of Swedish worship, but Fleshcrawl generally just aren´t the most original act on the scene. They bring zero new ideas to the world and are content playing the same old school death metal style they´ve played on now many album releases.

So it´s not in the songwriting department that we find anything out of the ordinary for the style. Thankfully Fleshcrawl know how to compose an effecful death metal tune, and that saves the album from being another mediocre and quite frankly redundant death metal release. "Into the Catacombs of Flesh" features strong musicianship and a well sounding production job too, so it´s overall a good quality death metal release. A little more musical identity and a few unique songwriting ideas could have made the album even more interesting though, and as it is my rating won´t go higher than a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating.
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