Exclusive Track Premiere: Fleshbore’s “Target Fixation”
Celestial Mechanics for the Tech Death Soul.
On January 24, 2025, Naptown tech-death maniacs Fleshbore will release Painted Paradise, their sophomore LP and first for industry titans Transcending Obscurity Records. Featuring current and former members of acts Demon King, Global Plague, Green Leaves, and Into the Divine, Fleshbore is a collection of young musicians who are otherwise long in the tooth in the proggy, melodic technical death metal that does not lack for ripping, raging riffage you’d more often find in the brutal death metal section of the record store. Robin Stone (Evilyn, Norse) even joins the affair as the band’s session drummer, providing a mad hand on the skins.
Thus far, we’ve been treated to lead singles “Inadequate” and “Laplace’s Game.” The former, anything but its namesake, stacks a few brow-flattening riffs onto each other while Michael O’Hara bellows brazenly along. O’Hara’s performance across the album is notable, as he shifts the speed and register of his delivery as quickly as Stone alters the direction of the track with a new fill or change in tempo. “Laplace’s Game” begins similarly aggressive to “Inadequate,” calling to mind Archspire and The Zenith Passage. There’s plenty of melody peeking, though it’s not till the 1:35 mark that the band treats listeners to the virtuoso bass-walking experience they might be expecting from such tech death. A reprieve as brief as it is beautiful, as we’re just as quickly back to a band screaming like an alien meteor across the fire-illumined sky. There’s a great diversity in the kind of riffs Chav and McGinley stitch together, the two playing off each other and harmonizing expertly.
Today, we’re thrilled to premiere Painted Paradise’s third single, “Target Fixation.” The track opens with O’Hara fully outside of his mind, where he’ll stay for most of the track, employing an absolutely rapid-fire delivery, dropping down to roaring gutturals and rising to throat-shredding rasps with seeming abandon. Not to be outdone, the rest of the band rips through the fastest, heaviest, catchiest riffs we’ve heard so far. “Target Fixation” is technical, brutal, and expertly crafted with not one piece out of place. The band’s knack for melody is embedded in some of the speedier riffs, but there’s no respite as there is in “Laplace’s Game.” This isn’t meteors tearing through the sky; this is foreign objects slamming into the Earth.
About the track, the band has this to say:
As the target appears in the distance, our objective becomes clear.
We know what must be done. Listen to ‘Target Fixation.’
No arguments from me! There’s simply nothing left to do but jam play on “Target Fixation” below, head over to Fleshbore’s bandcamp to check the other two singles, and then express rush that pre-order to your ever-expanding galaxy brain. You’re a philosopher and a poet, an astronomer mathematician. You’re Pierre-Simon Laplace incarnate. At least, you will be once you hear Painted Paradise.