On paper alone, fleshwater is a band of progress shifters within the modern heavy music scene, consisting of members of Greater Boston metalcore next-gens Vein.fm in vocalist Anthony DiDio, guitarist Jeremy Martin (who switches gear here as their bassist) and drummer Matt Wood alongside Mirar Shirar of the Los Angeles-based experimental shoegaze act MIRSY. While their debut full-length, We’re Not Here to Be Loved, bleeds a reverence for pioneering ‘90s alternative ranging from heavy splatter of the Deftones and Hum, the electronic atmospheres of Björk and Portishead, and the more metallic-leanings of early Smashing Pumpkins in their static discharge toiled in big riff-ripped, anthemic form under the embossed studio hands of Converge’s Kurt Ballou, the four-piece are also looking beyond the timeline of that era. Similarly to what they do with their own genre-busting primary acts, they channel genuine oddity through hardcore blastbeats, rogue electricity, dynamo synths, and Didio and Shirar’s co-mingling eerie vocal spectacle. The end result is a standout example where today’s hardcore-adjacent artists aren’t merely appropriating past fingerprints, but doing what they did in tearing beyond convention and creating their own rules.
Highlights: “Closet”, “The Razor’s Apple”, “Kiss the Ladder”
fleshwater’s We’re Not Here to Be Loved is available now on Closed Casket Activities.
+rcmndedlisten /// New Music Highlights In Alternative Sounds 
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