Recommended EP: fleshwater – ‘Sounds of Grieving’

fleshwater want us to know that there is more to their substance than just heavy, alternative rock-resurrecting mechanics behind their sound. Like their creative kin Vein.fm — the metalcore band who shares three members with fleshwater in Anthony DiDio, Jeremy Martin, and Matt Wood joined by Mirar Shirar of the Los Angeles-based experimental shoegaze act MIRSY — and their 2020 remixed and reworked effort, Old Data in a New Machine, Vol. 1 — the eastern Mass rockers challenge your perspective of their depths through multifaceted experimentation on Sounds of Grieving. The extended play revisits several tracks from fleshwater’s breakthrough 2022 breakthrough, We’re Not Here To Be Loved, as well as their 2020 demo, though you may not initially pick up on that, as they’re masked under different song titles rediscovered in different form than where we last found them. The supercharged heavygaze of “Whoohoo” becomes an amorphous instrumental sculpture while “Closet” and “what was really said” respectively trade in a scream from the bottom of despair’s pit for an echoed reverie as well on “closet (acoustic)” as test out different amperages in transmitting blastbeats through trip-hop-adjacent kinetics on “what the f#%! was said”. In the case of the EP’s title track, the effort leaves us with an ominous epitaph made of dark, post-industrial ’90s electronica that you can imagine might flow over into whatever the band does next. In mourning their creative pasts, fleshwater enter a new phase of life.

Highlights: “woohoo (‘what if’ mix)”, “what the f#%! was said”, “the sound of grieving”

fleshwater’s The Sound of Grieving is available now on Closed Casket Recordings.

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