Reviewed - 02/18/05

Made Of Flesh
[Metal Blade Records]

Metal Blade seems to not be promoting one of their most reliable bands. Now by reliable, I don’t mean “guaranteed sales and coverage in ‘Revolver’” but by a band putting out high-quality death metal albums on a regular basis.

Those familiar with Fleshcrawl will know this band started as a rather standard death metal band churning out gory blasts of brutality that eventually matured to offer more melodic, less-brutal death metal. Fleshcrawl may have more in common with Entombed and Dismember than Deicide, but still back a hefty wallop like the newest Cannibal Corpse album.

With that said, “Made of Flesh” is a great piece of European death metal. Fleshcrawl successfully incorporates melody, growls, gurgles and the occasional blast beat into their 7th full length. Tracks like

“Into the Depths of No Return” and “Flesh Bloody Flesh” will satisfy most metal palates. The only real negative is that the album seems to sputter a bit towards the end until the closer, “When Life Surrenders” comes in grinds the album to a amazing close.

While the Germany’s Fleshcrawl isn’t doing anything new or innovative, they hit the marks and give fans of bands like Grave, Unleashed and Dismember what they crave.