Hey there, tech fiends. It's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual weekly reminder that if you're looking for even more sick bands to hear, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
At the very tail end of December 2016, a then-new act from Olso, Norway called Fleshmeadow launched their killer debut album, Umbra. Even as an end of the year release, Umbra got quite a bit of buzz and coverage throughout 2017. I reviewed it here for this column and still think it’s a great release even now.
Fast forward to the present and Fleshmeadow has returned quite recently on October 11th with Daymares. A four-song EP that continues to further the group's interesting approach to intertwining black metal and technical death metal together.
While the material on Umbra was quite impressive, Daymares definitely pushes their sound forwards and throws in their longest and most epic song to date, the near 8-minute “Visions”. If you’re new to the band, their core identity is a blend of Obscura and Decapitated with a metric fuckton of different black metal influences darting in and out of their death metal side. To me, that’s what makes this band so special, this isn’t “blackened” tech-death, it really is as the band calls it “a fusion of technical death metal and black metal and the goal is to bring together the best of two worlds.”
At a bit over 21 minutes, there’s quite a lot to digest and unpack across numerous listens of Daymares. I’ve embedded the release below and you owe it to yourself to check it out. If you’re into it, you can order Daymares through Bandcamp. You can also follow the group over on the Fleshmeadow Facebook page.
