ALBUM REVIEW: Opera – Fleshgod Apocalypse
Watching an opera is like witnessing open heart surgery unfold in front of your eyes. Highly choreographed, painfully intense, and prone to ending in utter tragedy; they’re character development studies disguised as entertainment. On Opera, their first album in five years, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE simultaneously explore the physical and psychological peaks and troughs of frontman Francesco Paoli’s recovery from a hiatus-inducing mountain climbing accident, and perform a symphonic death metal masterpiece delivered as an operatic piece.
Bookended by Ode To Art (De’ Sepolcri) and the titular closer — two black clouds raining the pitter patter of sombre piano on your parade — Opera fully immerses you into its theatrical experiment. Soaked in loneliness, with the house lights at their dimmest, you’re kept on tenterhooks, waiting for the scene to change.
If the opener had your pulse evening out, I Can Never Die forces your heart to pump blood through your veins at hyperspeed; battering ram blast beats, buzzsaw guitars, and Paoli’s eardrum-rupturing roar of “I can never die” does enough damage to cause a cardiac arrest. If you survive long enough to hear Veronica Bordacchini’s colosseum-sized NIGHTWISH-inspired chorus, you’ll be giving a standing ovation before the second verse starts.
Where many artists would struggle to maintain a level of consistency, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE have painstakingly crafted a suite of music that flows from unskippable track to unskippable track. At War With My Soul’s opening flourishes feel more like a movie score than a symphonic death metal track, as string arrangements rise above blasphemous double bass drums and Bordacchini and Paoli’s vocals wage war between heaven and hell, whilst Morphine Waltz’s gliding piano solo, soaring string arrangements and banshee howls offer FLESHGOD’s freakish interpretation of a waltz.
2019’s Veleno saw FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE take major strides in their musical output, however Opera trims the fat like a butcher’s knife, reducing its predecessor’s runtime by 20 minutes. Structured like an opera, every track rides the scales, each an interconnecting scene that reveals Paoli’s physical and psychological battles from the depths of depression to the light of recovery.
If the first half of Opera feels like EPICA dosed up on technical death metal, its second act revels in mid-90s melodeath. Per Aspera Ad Astra pits two sides of the same coin against each other as operatic vocals wage war against Paoli’s death growls, forever fighting through what feels like an entire choral symphony commanding the mix. Till Death Do Us Part, meanwhile, taps into the progressive majesty of IRON MAIDEN post-Brave New World; its insidious pace and Bordacchini’s vocals fade out the action, the harmonic vocal humming of the lead guitar a ghostly yet magical finale.
If you thought SEPTICFLESH had sharpened symphonic death metal’s template with 2022’s Modern Primitive, Opera is FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE’s way of saying “hold my beer”. Simply put, Opera is the definitive symphonic death metal album, and it’s likely you’ll struggle to find much better for some time.
Rating: 10/10
Opera is set for release on August 23rd via Nuclear Blast Records.
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