If your only exposure to metal is what’s happening on the very surface, you’d think the whole genre was doomed. We’ve got Sleep Token as the biggest metal band in the world, who treat it more like a bullet point on a business plan than anything worth caring about. We’ve got their paid-for clone PRESIDENT nipping at their heels in relevance with exponentially more cynical returns. And behind them, we’ve got the umpteen-millionth band of alt-metalcore chancers with copy-pasted songs and an inexplicably huge number of streams for each. And yet, because metal as a whole is as hardy as genres come, there’ll always be plenty of amazing names waiting in the wings, not receiving a fraction of the attention but smoking the main guys regardless. And that’s without fail, too; a little bit of exploration will always produce something excellent, guaranteed.
All of that serves as a slightly clunky prologue to how Pupil Slicer have their best album yet in Fleshwork, by far. And they’ve done so in the way that’s always the most gratifying—reinvention with not a drop of integrity lost. This still feels like the band peddling vicious mathcore befitting of their moniker, though notably shaken up and expanded. The songs are bigger and loom lower, and any feel of frenzy has metastasised into something more chronic. Simultaneously, the spirit of the band who cleaved their way through to underground favourite status on Mirrors and Blossom remains present and plain to see.
Chiefly, Fleshwork’s feeling of purpose has carried over the most. There’s nothing about Pupil Slicer fundamentally that’s been turned down here, when the soundscape is designed to invoke the dystopian hellscape that arrives as dehumanisation and marginalisation reaches its point of no return. Tonal inspirations from film, video games and anime yield the industrial crush and grind of the title track, or the procession of war machines conveyed through sound on Gordian and Sacrosanct. Further to that, notable swerves into black-metal wring even more out of the bleak, harsh production, whether that’s through exceptionally effective blastbeats on songs like Innocence and Black Scrawl, or bleary flood of release that Nomad finds itself as, almost akin to Touché Amoré in execution.
As a unit, Pupil Slicer pull all of this off with near-faultless proficiency. It’s great to Luke Booth’s bass have as prominent a role as it does, a clear boon after some more stringent mathcore space that’s fully taken advantage of. Black Scrawl in particular feels like the apex of Fleshwork in performance, as a callback to unfettered discord that pits Booth against some unreal drumming from Josh Andrews without reneging on the monolithic sound by going too clinical. It’s the perfect centrepiece for the album in showing Pupil Slicer at their most daring and creative, and keeping it all so concentrated. And it’s far from isolated in that regard, too; ‘daring’ and ‘creative’ are Fleshwork at its default. Even tiny touches find the best ways to culminate, like the whirrs and mechanical screams that cloud the production of Sacrosanct, or the grimy texture lent by some perfectly restrained synths on the title track.
Even the contributions of vocalist Kate Davies feed into the living desolation of Fleshwork. On her own, she sets a terrific standard—screams that are exactly what you’d want with the perfect amount of drive. It’s on Innocence that the first big move is made, however, where the vocals are left ambiguous and blurred-out, like the disembodied voices of those crushed under this world’s regime. For as strange as it can be—as in, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that there’s barely a comprehensible word—it’s a good tactic for Pupil Slicer to continue growing and explore what they can do within metal. Saying that, they mighn’t be all the way there, as a similar technique is tried on the lighter, more melodic White Noise that ends up being more washed-out than it can handle. The closer Cenote also lands with less confidence, as it tries to justify its almost-eight minutes with grand diversification than isn’t as effective as a blunt-force beating.
Still, the want to attempt is commendable by itself, and given the scorching that Fleshwork already delivers from Pupil Slicer’s expanse, there’s keen enthusiasm here. The band wear it phenomenally, as they bypass the cul-de-sac that mathcore can sometimes threaten, to become an all-purpose, all-consuming metal force. Again, it’s the best work that Pupil Slicer have put their name to, and a few listens makes it clear that that’s by no small margin. In every way, the perfect antidote to any mainstream-induced dejection.
For fans of: Heriot, Oathbreaker, Better Lovers
‘Fleshwork’ by Pupil Slicer is released on 7th November on Prosthetic Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
