FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

There is nothing quite like a near-death experience for bringing things into sharp focus. In 2021, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE frontman Francesco Paoli was involved in a mountain climbing accident that threatened to put an abrupt end to his life as a musician. After multiple surgeries, months of uncertainty and all the mental turmoil that goes with it, the Italian emerged from the chaos fully recovered and got back to work. The result is "Opera": the musical telling of the incident that nearly cost Paoli his life, via a wholesale reimagining of FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE's state-of-the-art symphonic death metal and, as its title implies, a large amount of operatic and neoclassical bombast.

Collaborating with opera singer Veronica Bordacchini, whose mind-blowing skills elevate every last minute, they have effectively upgraded and redefined their entire sound, transforming it from a simple benchmark for grandiose death metal into a seamless and endlessly impressive symbiosis between elegance and brutality. It plays out like a 40-minute theatre piece, with dramatic peaks and troughs galore, making just about everything else released this year sound a bit half-hearted. Paoli's near-death experience has given him a new surge of confidence and creativity, and at times it is almost laugh-out-loud funny how absurdly over-the-top this all is.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE were always an ambitious lot. Symphonic death metal had plenty of respected exponents, but the Italians' 2009 debut "Oracles" blew the majority of them away. Ever since, they have been the one band that most precisely defines what the subgenre is all about, while also pushing this highly detailed and dynamic form of extreme metal further into the unknown. Their last album, "Veleno" (2019),  now seems to have marked the end of an era because "Opera" is full of wonder and excitement at future possibilities. The pitiless symphonic death assault that has been a FLESHGOD trademark remains the core of everything they do, and songs like "I Can Never Die" and "Per Aspera Ad Astra" blast, hammer and punish with as much venom as anything on earlier albums. The difference here is that Paoli's revitalized vision of death metal, emboldened by the might of an orchestra and twisted into unfamiliar shapes, is blossoming into something far more interesting.

The opening "Ode To Art (De' Sepolcri)" heralds the birth of this fresh hybrid, wherein opera's melodic refinement and overall sumptuousness are skillfully assimilated into some of the most intense but also deceptively accessible material FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE have recorded to date. Among many moments of exhilarating indulgence, the exquisitely crestfallen "Till Death Do Us Part" confirms that Paoli's songwriting prowess now extends to more straightforward expressions of melody and mood, while the closing title track's naked piano seem to gently encapsulate the emotions that have coalesced in this astonishing, life-affirming piece of work.