Flesh of the Stars are from the US and play doom metal. This is their fifth album.
Flesh of the Stars are a band that I always enjoy catching up with. 2015’s Hide, 2017’s Anhilla, and 2019’s Mercy are all albums worthy of your time, and the same is true of their new record, The Glass Garden, doubly so in fact.
The Glass Garden contains 51 minutes of new material from this superlative act, and they’ve truly gone and produced something pretty damn special this time around. All of Flesh of the Stars’ records are very worth listening to, but this one especially so. It takes their considerable strengths and stretches them further than ever before. This is an album of breadth and depth.
The detailed songwriting embraces minimalism, yet still provides deep texture through a range of instruments, ideas, sounds, and well-crafted songwriting. All five songs are worlds unto themselves; any one of them offers more than most ostensibly similar acts do across an album, and taken together The Glass Garden is highly compelling and engaging.
The riffs are deliberate and considered, allowing the music to create large structures of emotive distortion. They’re placed strategically and with great impact. The vocals are intimate and expressive, carrying emotional weight with affecting ease. Rich synths provide delicate layers that coat the rest of the music with feeling, while evocative melodies and progressive songwriting craft vast and inviting soundscapes for the listener to lose themselves in.
This is Flesh of the Stars’ most ambitious, professional, and wide-ranging release yet. As I said at the end of my review for Mercy, how this band aren’t more popular I’ll never know, and I stand by that assessment. The Glass Garden is a superior work of progressive doom metal immensity, and any fan of bands like Pallbearer, Electric Wizard, 40 Watt Sun, Khemmis, Windhand, Elder, Green Lung, etc. should be lapping this up.
Essential listening.
Find out more here.
Wonderbox Metal 