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SYLOSIS “The New Flesh”
SYLOSIS “The New Flesh”
By Dr. Abner Mality
This band has been kicking around for at least 20 years and has yet to leave much of a mark. One of the problems is that they don’t know exactly what they are themselves. “The New Flesh” hops from radio friendly dad rock to LAMB OF GOD style thrashing groove to almost industrial metal sounds. If they focused on one of these, they might have a more coherent album in their hands.
Press describes SYLOSIS mainman Josh Middleton as if he’s the baddest motherfucker on the planet. Please! I listen to metal on a daily basis that chews this up and spits it out. Now that doesn’t mean this is soft stuff. There are actually moments that hit pretty hard, like “Beneath The Surface” which thrashes pretty good and a punishing “All Glory, No Valour”. But then we have the curse of clean vocals, which kill the vibe of every track they appear in. We have tracks like “Mirror, Mirror” and the title track that have that FEAR FACTORY gone nu-metal sound as well as the crazed “Adorn My Throne” which literally sounds like it’s trying to be five songs at once, including one with dreadful clean metalcore vocals.
When this is at its worst, we get unforgivable radio-style dad rock ballads like “Everything At Once” which has an almost 3 DOORS DOWN touch on the mellow verses…yes, it’s that bad…and “Seeds In The River”, a modern day METALLICA type track that has its heavy parts derailed by more commercial crooning. The rest of the tracks here are somewhat tolerable but there’s no excuse for folderol like this when you describe your album as “metal as fuck”.
Somewhere a good band is lurking inside SYLOSIS but it will take a LOT of work to bring it to the surface. They’ve been at it for 20 years, it’s getting late in the game.
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