FLESH – Worship The Soul Of Disgust

Flesh is actually a one man project with Pete Flesh handling everything apart from the drums; these are taken care of by Flingan who was Flesh’s band buddy from Deceiver. Flesh formed this project to serve his needs for artistic exploration and experimentation. This idea was born in the late 90s and started becoming music in 2005 when Pete entered Abyss Studio to record the debut Dodsangest. The positive reaction by the press and later on by the Metal community boosted Pete who returned in the studio to record Temple Of Whores.

Things were getting bigger and some problems with Iron Fist production forced Pete to change record labels and sign with Pulverised Records. So, Worship The Soul Of Disgust is the third Flesh album that reached Metal Express Radio to receive the proper review.

“Shatahan” opens the album with an almost clean guitar intro that is interrupted by a classic Black Metal growl and an even more classic shredding riff. The track bears the unpolished Black Metal mark revealing influences mainly from Norwegian bands and some underlying early Venom finishing touches. The guitar solo shares some of Emperor’s insanity while the solid rhythm section leads to fast blast beats that promise to snap your neck. Blasphemy is the main subject in “I Masturbate To Jesus Christ” that pays the proper respect to the blackness and heaviness of Celtic Frost while “Nights Of Funeral Bells” gains some more speed looking towards Slayer during the Haunting The Chapel golden era.

Aggression and heaviness are the main elements of this album that are perfectly treated (recorded and mixed) by Peter Tangtren (Pain/Hypocrisy) who knows his way around the dim corridors of extreme music. The weak point of this album is that it offers absolutely nothing new; the word experimentation used in the introduction is confined to some useless effects and sounds that sometimes are annoying like the bird crows in “Feast Of The Soul.” Well, “My Penis Will Be Your Opera” carries an almost original sound but as the title implies is nothing really interesting. The album closes with the homonymous track that returns to the fast pounding tempo under an Immortal perspective, some really good guitar leads and fills and a heavy as-hell mid tempo break.

The good thing with Worship The Soul Of Disgust is that it features the music genre the artwork describes with skulls, horns and (of course) inverted crosses; and that is almost old-school Black Metal that moves around the classic influences without too many surprises. The fans of this genre can find and even remember some of the old days when Black Metal bands used to focus on blasphemy and aggression keeping a safe distance from the money making trends.