Flesia's Unfettered Black Metal Captures The Imagination on "Freiwilliger Insasse" (Video Premiere)
Often focused on grand concepts and delivered with cryptic aesthetics, black metal can sometimes feel larger than life, or at least larger than mortal reckoning. It’s always interesting seeing how bands try to transfer this sentiment to the live stage, be it through solemn costumes or gruesome props, but it’s equally fascinating when there’s simply no pretense, only earnestly delivered metal. For a rousing example of the latter, here’s a video of German black metallers Flesia performing their track “Freiwilliger Insasse” (roughly, “Volunteer Inmate” in English) off their upcoming album Trost: no frills here, just ferocity.
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It would be hard to gauge this simply from listening, but as the video shows, the massive sound of “Freiwilliger Insasse” is produced by just three individuals, one of which is solely dedicated to the deeply disturbing vocals. The sound that comes out of the bass, though, is more than thick enough to drown out lesser bands on its own, presumably run through both of the amps seen in the video, and here it’s matched up against tight blasts for a sight-defying wall of sound. The song’s incessant pace keeps up the tension as insidious riffs billow forth, seemingly interpreted by the mysterious, generally hair-shrouded vocalist whose deep growls tap into primal fears with each frighteningly clear enunciation.
I dearly love theatricality in heavy metal, but image and aesthetics are only as impressive as the music behind them in the end. Flesia’s black metal strips the genre down to its barest, cruelest essentials—and rendered live in this unassuming setting, it casts truly frightening shadows.
From the band:
You can watch us three play our first album single “Freiwilliger Insasse” live at Alte Spitzenfabrik in Grimma, Germany. Flesia never played live until this point and just a handful of persons has listened to our music. This video should give you a small idea how Flesia works and how we do sound live. There is no editing done on the audio files, it is just a recording of the noise we create. We hope you like it.
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Trost releases October 1st via Revolvermann Records.
