#178 | Album Review | Afterbirth – Four Dimensional Flesh

Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:06:16 — 289.0MB)

Well, hello and welcome to a podcast about a death metal band. But not just any death metal band. These bois are one of the key progenitors of that sub-genre (of a sub-genre) known as brutal death metal. But more importantly, they converted me, Duncan, to the dark side of all things that SLAM. But this should come as no surprise, considering they have released what is, at the time of writing, my favourite album of the year. It is fresh, it is creative, it is emotive, it is invigorating, it is ALIVE (contrary to the deathly genre of which it belongs), and it is something I have listened to pretty much every day of this lockdown after a hard day’s toil at the virtual office.

As you would have already read in the title, I am, of course, referring to the album Four Dimensional Flesh by Afterbirth. I’ll just put it out there right now and say that right off the bat, this album absolutely fucking slaps. These guys have managed to create an album of brutal death metal which is somehow as beautiful and ethereal as it is repulsively heavy. And Jeebus be praised, it does this without venturing into the realm of melodic death metal.

So give the below podcast a listen and hear Ryan and I incoherently ramble about how fucking much we love this album, and how we are in total awe that these musical maestros have somehow managed to bridge the gap between brutal death metal, post-rock, ambient, and shoegaze. We discuss and try to understand every sound, every tone, every fill and every riff on this album (don’t worry, the album is actually super short and we probably only actually cover about 5% of this), and we pay tribute to the legendary Will Smith for both his excellent lyrics and frog-like gutturals. But ultimately, in this discussion, we try to figure out how these guys managed to pull off this genre-defying release of epic proportions. How did they do it? What makes it so good? And why does more Death Metal not sound like this? In the words of a particular Norwegian friend-murdering racist: “Let’s find out!”

* * * * * *

You can acquire a digital copy of Four Dimensional Flesh over at the Unique Leader Records Bandcamp page. Vinyl copies of the record are currently sold out, however, CDs are available over at Unique Leader’s IndieMerch page. Be sure to follow the quartet over on Facebook and Instagram to stay in the loop about new developments from their neck of the woods.

If you’d like to support us beyond listening to our podcast, you can do so by becoming a patron on our Patreon page. There you can read all of our notes for each album review episode we publish, gain early access to every episode before its official release, and acquire an embroidered From Corners Unknown patch, a button, and stickers if that’s your thing.

In next week’s episode, Connor and Ryan will prattle on about END’s debut LP, Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face.