THE FLESH PREVAILS

"The Flesh Prevails" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US, San Francisco, California based technical/progressive death metal act Fallujah. The album was released through Unique Leader Records in July 2014. "The Harvest Wombs (2011)" debut album was a promising release which was followed up by the even more promising "Nomadic (2013)" EP, so it´s safe to say that Fallujah have started their career in a successful manner.

And that tendency continues on "The Flesh Prevails" which features high class technical/progressive death metal. Fallujah always had a deathcore edge to their music because of the shouting type growling vocals and the start/stop type heavy riffing, but they are predominantly a death metal act. The deathcore elements are also featured on "The Flesh Prevails" though. Other than those elements the music features technical precision drumming and ditto riffing, multible tempo changes, atmospheric sections with clean guitar textures, and semi-jazzy guitar solos, that remind me slighly of "Focus (1993)"-era Cynic.

The band are incredibly well playing and obviously very skilled, which is a great asset when playing this type of music, but on the other hand it´s not like technical playing alone is going to amaze that many listeners in this day and age. Thankfully Fallujah are also pretty skilled composers and the material on "The Flesh Prevails" are well written, brutal, intriguing, and relatively catchy. The whole thing is packed in a clear, detailed, and very powerful sound production, that should please fans of the genre. No old school aestethics here.

Fallujah have taken a step forward with "The Flesh Prevails" and it´s obvious they´ve given the direction of their music a lot of thought. The atmospheric part of their music which is one of the features that makes their music stand out among other artists playing this style of music, is still a major part of their sound, but they balance it off well with brutality and fast technical playing, and end up with a pretty intriguing style. If I have to mention a minor issue it would be that the vocals are pretty generic sounding. They get the job done, but there´s little here that distinguishes them from the growling vocals by other contemporary death metal acts. A more distint sounding and less monotone/one-dimensional vocal style would really have done the trick and lifted the quality of "The Flesh Prevails" to an even higher level, but as it is a 4 star (80%) rating is still deserved.