Album Review: Fleshgod Apocalypse – Opera

By DAN SOUTHALL

ITALY’S Fleshgod Apocalypse are death metal with a difference. “The difference?” I hear you ask. A genuine opera singer – and strings. This band has been growing in popularity and interest since the release of their King album and its follow-up Veleno before the world stopped for a few years. Then a mountain climbing accident almost saw the end of mastermind Francesco Paoli. The hiatus for his recovery saw the exit of their other original member, bassist and clean vocalist Paolo Rossi.

What the exit of Paolo Rossi did allow was the stepping up of operatic vocalist Veronica Bordacchini. Whilst Bordacchini was previously used sparsely to break up the chaos, her beautiful vocals are now writ large everywhere, from the cinematic album opener “Ode To Art (De’ Sepolcri)” and its immediate follow up “I Can Never Die” to dreamy “Til Death Do Us Part” that has those sublime vocals layered but not reaching for the operatic highs as elsewhere on the album.

Besides the vocal abilities of their clean singer, this album is the story of Paoli’s accident and his recovery. He tells a very honest story, all but mentioning exactly what went wrong. I don’t think I have ever really bothered to seek out the lyrics of a death metal album as much as I chose to read along to the tracks here. In particular, the harrowing “Pendulum” and “Bloodclock”, as our story teller slips and falls, and then explains laying at the bottom of what one can only imagine is a ravine, dying. Heavy music in more than one way.

This story continues to be dark through the fast paced “Morphine Waltz”, blasting some of the fastest material they have laid down, forcing the string arrangement to keep up, almost straining to do so. In the heart-rending “Matriarch 8.21”, our vocalist apologises to his mother in the most metal way possible.

Of course, a near death experience is going to leave indelible marks on the human psyche but to take all those emotions and be able to condense them and create such a positive piece of musical art is astounding. A long time back I reviewed the King as almost faultless for the musical chaos it created and held together. But this album is as it says on the tin: an opera: a musical piece, a story, created to move the listener and inspire a raft of emotions throughout its length. Opera taps into some of the raw elements of human emotion, laid bare by someone who survived the tragic tale it tells.

Get Opera on vinyl