Flesia Wades Into Hellish Waters on “Essenz I” (EP Stream)

Flesia's debut album Trost is, as I described it last year, a refreshingly direct affair: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals deliver pummeling black metal with a focus on instrumental annihilation versus crafting an aesthetic. Their new EP Essenz I follows the same path, but much like the trapped figure on its album art, finds the band in darker, dirtier waters than before. Their frills-free approach generates heavier and more bombastic songs - with an extremity venturing into death metal territory at times, guitar and bass combine into an excoriating, unstoppable wall. Delightfully visceral vocals and crisp drums then lend this undulating mass a semblance of structure and direction. Essenz I uses tempo changes as a crude bludgeon, hammering the high-powered barrage into the brain a notch or two deeper with every unexpected surge and lull.

On the whole, it's a bit of a surprise release, having been announced just days ago and likely to hit Bandcamp in a few hours, but this directness matches the album's blunt urgency. Though the album brims with an unseen malevolence, the band wastes no effort intentionally cultivating this or fashioning a narrative: through some twisted natural process, this is just meaner and more oppressive than ever.

Stream the EP below and look out for it making its way to Bandcamp soon.

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The band comments:

New ideas were born right after the T R O S T LP release and found their way into these songs naturally. We visited the lovely Heartware Studios in late April of this year. F L E S I A got even darker and noisier, more metal is woven into and it feels like the right direction this mixture of bass, drums and vocals flows towards.