Review Summary: Deliberately crafted chaos.
I don't like wankery. But excess is my guilty pleasure. I hate saccharine simplicity, except when it's delivered in just the right way. I suppose I'm doing Fallujah injustice by tossing words like that around. This quintet has legitimate technical chops, and the songwriting isn't half-bad either. But everything on this album is calculatedly huge. Never mind the raging walls of sound, blistering blastbeats and massive melodies. Even the reserved, atmospheric passage are big in their own right, like a third-rate film composer who hasn't quite mastered subtlety. But strangely enough, it all works.
There are a lot of reasons I shouldn't like
The Flesh Prevails. Homogeneity runs rampant. The production, while letting the instrumentalists come through crystal-clear, often buries Alex Hofmann's mid-range roars, not that they're anything special. The lyrics are vaguely average. But I'm still impressed by the sheer intensity and drama of it all. The mercifully concise runtimes ("Chemical Cave," the longest song here, barely avoids the six-minute mark) rein in noodling tendencies. Songs don't feel rigidly structured, but self-contained, packing both punch and melodic prowess.
And there is plenty of prowess. "Sapphire" is a thrill ride, bouncing from riffy stanza to semi-breakdown to tasteful solo and back with a polished ease. "Levitation"'s beautiful introduction only makes the ensuing crunchy riffs hit harder. When Hofmann takes the backseat on songs like the title cut and "Chemical Cave," the layers of texture make themselves more apparent. It's all a surprisingly lush experience given the sheer number of notes.
It's unfortunate, then, that
The Flesh Prevails isn't the sum of its parts. Quite simply, the band needs to spend more time with the pedal off the floor. It's disconcerting how much of this album passes by as white noise, and sacrificing some clarity of production for power and sincerity couldn't hurt. But when I do sit down and force myself to pay attention, I get lost in what Fallujah has crafted.
