Made of Flesh

The seventh album by German death metal merchants Fleshcrawl sounds, for better or for worse, pretty much like the previous six. For fans of the style, who are nearly as demanding of tradition as old blues purists, this is by no means a criticism: where many of the original breed of death metal bands either splintered after a few albums or began diluting their original sound with either too much speed (at which point they might as well be playing hardcore punk) or (horrors) too much melody, the four members of Fleshcrawl have if anything refined and purified their sound to its most basic elements: riff-based tunes that hold a steady ground between the primodial ooze of genre forefathers like Black Sabbath and hardcore's mile-a-minute frenzy, Bastian Herzog's scarily precise drumming and Sven Gross' death-growl vocals. This is the sort of record that Fleshcrawl's fanbase will snap to immediately, but will leave anyone else entirely cold.