SYK – eartHFlesh

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  SYK
• Duration: 00:45:17
• Available from: 10/05/2024
• Label:

• Season Of Mist

Streaming not yet available

With 2022's “Pyramiden”, Syk seem to have reached an unbreakable level of form and stability: excellent reviews, various awards, a contract with Nuclear Blast.
Just after the release of the album, however, the singer Dalila Kayros and the drummer Mauro Maraldo were forced to abandon the band for personal reasons, leaving the two survivors, the leader and founder Stefano Ferrian and the now long-standing guitarist Marcello Cravini, the task of finding replacements and continuing the adventure: these are identified as bassist Alan La Roca and Federico Leone on drums, while for the vocals an internal solution is decided, with Ferrian himself taking on the task. In addition to all this, also the change of label, with the move to the equally prestigious Season Of Mist.
The fourth album was born under these assumptions and, to describe it, the simplest way is to quote a couple of indications that Stefano himself had given us in an interview at the time of the publication of “Pyramiden”: “The fourth album will probably be more violent” And “If there was a growl voice to accompany the music we would easily be pigeonholed as a death metal band with black influences and some Nevermorian brushstrokes here and there“.
“eartHFlesh” is just that: a brutal and menacing death metal record, which takes your breath away from start to finish. The 'new' Syk are linked to the past by the monstrous riffs of their eight-string guitars, by the nervous rhythms, by the complex dynamics and by the groove that they always manage to keep alive; It lacks that catchy and avant-garde effect that Dalila's strongly characterizing voice (however a guest on four pieces) gave to previous albums, but it is compensated by a renewed ferocity and a darker mood, in a claustrophobic tangle of intricate scores.
“I'll Haunt You In Your Dreams” is a nightmare come true and “Where I Am Going There Is No Light” is equally terrifying, if it weren't for a sneaky melody that creeps in the background, while in “The Passing” what is deceiving is an ethereal female voice, but in general it makes little sense to analyze the individual songs in such a compact and heterogeneous work.
As always happens with Syk, “eartFHlesh” is not an easy listen, it is not mere entertainment but music that requires attention to be understood. Considering the premises, a return to these levels was by no means a given.