Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, No. 1 goes to Fleshwater’s “Jetpack.”
Fleshwater’s 2022 debut album garnered widespread praise, establishing the band’s sonic identity while separating the project from guitarist/vocalist Anthony DiDio’s other successful band, Vein.fm. As opposed to the latter’s intricate metalcore, Fleshwater have a distinctly ’90s heavy alt/indie sound, laced with mathy post-hardcore riffs — albeit less mathy than Vein — and melodic flourishes via the trade-off singing of DiDio and Marisa Shirar.
Portions of their latest single “Jetpack” — the first from the forthcoming sophomore effort 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky — recall bands like Chavez or At the Drive-In, but Fleshwater skew toward a heavier brand of riffage, breaking into more metallic territories during the chorus and breakdowns. The dual vocals are in full effect here as well, driving home the late-’90s/early-2000s vibes. That Fleshwater have shared bills with Deftones and The Mars Volta is truly befitting, as the former and the latter — or at least the aforementioned pre-Volta ATDI stuff — are great points of reference for what the Massachusetts band is dishing out.
Honorable Mentions:
Dying Wish – “I’ll Know You’re Not Around”
We tend to comb through a lot of metalcore while constructing the Heavy Song of the Week rundowns, so it’s always a joy to hear variation in a genre that’s become competitive in terms of exposure and thus, sometimes rote in its delivery. Dying Wish are not subscribing to any such mold, as evinced by “I’ll Know You’re Not Around.” There’s a melancholy here that’s genuine — a Cocteau Twins or Slowdive-type of melancholy — which is a credit to vocalist Emma Boster and her ethereal crooning during the intro and chorus. Contrastingly, she adopts deep gutturals for the verses, as the Oregon band flexes the full breadth of its sound across the nearly four-minute track.
Oxymorrons – “Blk Sheep”
NYC hip-hop/punk/metal act Oxymorrons just announced a new EP titled Create. Destroy. Rebuild. Repeat., sharing the single “Blk Sheep.” Described in the band’s press release as a “full-throttle protest against the performative systems we live under,” the track is a compact riffer that’s among Oxymorrons’ more metallic tunes to date, harkening back to the political groove-metal of Sepultura’s Roots album. The chorus takes a surprisingly pop-rock angle, offering some breathing room around the otherwise relentless verses.
Street Sects – “The Glass Shithouse”
Brutal primitive industrial from Austin duo Street Sects, “The Glass Shithouse” track is so smashed with distortion, it’s hard to discern some of the more danceable and melodic elements churning away in the decidedly crushed-out mix. Fans of classic ’80s industrial stalwarts like Foetus or Einstürzende Neubauten will be satiated. Also, it’s good to see one of the genre’s modern forerunners, HEALTH, proliferating the quality art of their contemporaries, as Street Sects’ new album and a separate side album under the Street Sex moniker are both coming out via HEALTH’s new imprint COMPULSION RECORDS.