ORACLES

Classical music and brutal death metal may sound as appealing as pickles and ice cream (unless you're pregnant) but once upon a time in a galaxy not far away, well THIS one, the same was true of chocolate and peanut butter until two individuals bumped into each other on the street and one's chocolate fell into the other's peanut butter and thus Reese's peanut butter cups were born. Well here we have a similar effect where symphonic classical orchestrations meet the most extreme brutal death metal. Yeah, i know the death metal often wins in the battle but when it sleeps, the symphony awakes. To be fair, the death metal is also unique in that it contains neoclassical guitar solos.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE debuted in 2009 with ORACLES and brings these two genres neck in neck and in all honesty the brutal death metal wins out. Mixing such such extreme genres is nothing new of course. Rhapsody, Angra, Therion and probably their closest cousin Septicflesh all started mixing classical music around extreme metal elements but i would have to vote FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE as being the most EXTREME of the lot with the most unrelenting brutality incorporating all the usual suspects death metal has to offer such as the growly guttural vocals, the highly distorted breakneck speed guitar and bass riffing and the blastbeat a million beats per second drumming. The music is technical to be sure but it is more mechanical and focused on just pounding the bleep out of your eardrums.

Yeah, this is tech death metal. Cold, sterile, brutal, designed to wake the dead. While it may seem this is a death match of classical vs. death metal, the fact is that the classical for the most part is simply entwined in the very fabric of the songs themselves. They seem to be written firstly as classical music and then the classical is dropped and layered upon with brutal death metal which is a clear contrast to bands likes Septicflesh tha t merely seem to symphonically embellish extreme metal. ORACLES isn't gonna convert classical music aficionados to brutal death metal lovers or vice versa but it will certainly appeal to those who love both genres and can appreciate the audacity of layering different genres together in a creative way. Think of it as extreme mashups and you'll get the picture! This is a confident and well-produced debut that shows that Italian music isn't all about romanticism and pastoral prog, they can also take the most melodic music and turn it into the most extreme headache music that would put second wave of black metal to shame.