The title is a lift from Videodrome, David Cronenberg’s 1983 body-horror film about the blurring of flesh and technology. It’s a statement of intent as much as a name, Sylosis have always been a band in transformation, shedding members, reinventing the lineup, orbiting a sun that is Josh Middleton: vocalist, guitarist, and the one constant through every iteration. The New Flesh is the third album since Middleton brought the band back in earnest, and it sounds like a group that has finally stopped apologising for being exactly what they are.
“Beneath the Surface” opens things without ceremony. The riff arrives before anything else does, a barrelling, low-slung thing that sets the tempo for everything to follow. Middleton’s vocals carry the kind of controlled aggression that comes from actually meaning the words, not just performing them. The song is an announcement more than an introduction, and it works precisely because it doesn’t bother trying to ease you in.
The record moves with real purpose through its early tracks. “Lacerations” is the kind of song that earns the word anthemic without dressing up in anything shiny, it’s just a riff and a groove and a chorus that you hear once and already know by heart. “All Glory, No Valour” is the drumming showcase, Ali Richardson pushing the tempo with the kind of ferocity that makes you realise the song could not function without someone at that level behind the kit. When the song locks in during its back half, it’s one of the record’s most satisfying moments.
“Spared from the Guillotine” is the track that earns the most column inches and deserves them. It’s unhinged in a very specific way, not chaotic, but wound so tight that when it finally releases, you feel it physically. The pick-scraping at the end of “Erased” achieves something similar; the song builds through an infectious mid-paced groove and the refrain “here’s your parting gift” before collapsing into something far more violent than its opening suggested.
The one genuine stumble is “Everywhere at Once,” a ballad that doesn’t quite have the weight to justify its position in the sequence. The sentiment, missing family while on the road, is honest enough, but the arrangement is too polished to let that honesty breathe. It’s the only moment where the production works against the song rather than for it.
“Circle of Swords” follows and rights the ship immediately, arriving with the kind of whiplash relief that only works because the dip was brief. The album closes with “Seeds in the River,” which carries some of the strongest riffs on the record and earns its place as the final word, a closing track that doesn’t wind down so much as resolve.
Middleton’s production sits in the modern metal register: clean, loud, precise. The guitars have enough low-end to feel genuinely heavy; bassist Ben Thomas loses ground in the mix more often than he should, though the riffs carry the weight regardless. What The New Flesh gets right, consistently and without apology, is the thing that brought people to Sylosis in the first place, the sense that the next riff is always worth waiting for.
Standout tracks: Spared from the Guillotine, Lacerations, Seeds in the River
