Fleshwrought - Dementia/Dyslexia (2010)

In a band that features Jonny Davy from Job for a Cowboy and Navene Koperweis (ex-The Faceless, ex-Animosity) we expected a shit-core marathon but instead we found ourselves listening to some sub-par technical/experimental Death Metal that features a few intersting ideas that could have been developed further to create a better album.

We have to admit that the musicianship on this release is pretty awesome and that Navene does a great job at playing all the instruments. However, the problem lays in actually crafting songs that can handle all this brilliance, “Dementia/Dyslexia” sounds completely disconnected from reality and feels more like a drugs induced ego-trip in showing how brutal and fast can you play the drums and how well can you play the guitar, than an actual album.

Featuring 10 songs and 30 minutes of music, fans of brutality (especially Death-core brutality), will be in heaven with this release. As for people that actually care about how songs are structured rather than how hard they are to play, we will be completely disappointed. The few solid ideas that we talk about is the use of trippy electronics (typically at the end or begging of the songs only, i.e. ”Programming the Herds” and “Weeping Hallucinations”, these elements would have made this album a more interesting and not as one dimensional as it is.

The best song in this release for us is “Dyslexic Interlude”, because it sounds very different from the rest of the album and actually shows some creativity rather than just blasting everything at the same time. Jonny Davy’s vocals are extremely brutal; we all know that, but they kind of take away from the actual skills behind the instruments. We would love to hear a vocals-less version of this album.

In general, Fleshwrought is the perfect example of an overly ambitious release that goes nowhere because of the lack of focus on the song-writing aspect. We all can hear how good Navene is playing instruments, but we also need to hear that he can actually write cohesive songs.

Release: August 3rd, 2010

Country: USA