We are not dealing with the same fleshwater of just one year ago, never mind five years ago when they were merely known as the mysterious side-project featuring members of Massachusetts metalcore boundary breakers Vein.fm alongside experimental shoegaze songwriter Marisa Shirar, b.n.a MIRSY. To understand one of the underground alternative rock scene’s most rapid ascents, we do need to revisit that critical origin story because it’s become a fascinating way to connect the dots across all timelines.

It was Vein.fm who in 2018 managed to catch the ear of the Deftones. They put them on their self-curated Dia De Los Deftones festival lineup, giving the band arguably their greatest exposure in front of the masses. Perhaps it was during that brief period of playing on the same big stage as the atmospheric nu-metal giants, the idea to create fleshwater was born? We can only speculate, though the timeline does add up.

Fast-forward to this past spring, and it was now fleshwater who were opening up for Deftones in front of sold out arenas instead behind the strength of their continued success — and a healthy boost from Gen Z’s ’90s alt-rock revival reverence — of their 2022 debut album, We’re Not Here to Be Loved. That’s a huge leap when the perceived offshoot becomes part of the main event.

With all the momentum behind them in 2025, it’s a foregone conclusion that their sophomore follow-up, 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky, hears fleshwater shooting for the stratosphere. Theirs looks nothing like their comparative heroes’, however. While the band could have easily continued on course to blowing up the scale of their heavenly heavy-gaze model, they’re also making new direction strides that do more to collide their gravity into a melodic hardcore meeting ground inside the cosmos that bridges the gap between all corners of their scene influences equally.

The whole is fleshwater’s sound alone, yet spiritually makes for a fitting inclusion into hardcore-adjacent space rock explorations alongside classics like Jimmy Eat World’s Futures, Cave In’s Antenna, Hum’s You’d Prefer An Astronaut, and yes, everything pulling you into Deftones’ illustrious black hole. “Green Street” and “Last Escape” are emotively rocket-strapped and headed straight for the stars even if it disintegrates their exteriors. Meanwhile, “Jetpack” and “Endless Sky” are filled with pools of pop static and sparkle that mark a natural progression from exiting We’re Not Here to Be Loved‘s darkened recesses for a vast sea of twinkling lights and white hot afterburn.

As punctuation marks, those sonic detours we heard within 2023’s reconstruction EP, Sounds of Grieving, prove to be more than mere creative experiments for fleshwater’s in-betweens, with tracks like “Be Your Best” and “Silverine” folding trip-hop and sparse art-rock arrangements into their expanding universe. If you’ve been keeping track of each and every dot, you might want to pin drop 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky as the big bang moment on their timeline, arriving not a second too soon or too late to explode fleshwater with deep impact throughout all of space.

Highlights: “Jetpack”, “Last Escape”, “Be Your Best”

fleshwater’s 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky is available now on Closed Casket Activities.

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