Deeds Of Flesh’s 1995 EP Gradually Melted launched one of the most interesting carreers during Death Metal’s latest stages. in evolution. Eventually Deeds Of Flesh would found Unique Leader Records, a record label still flooding the Death Metal scene with standardized Brutal Death Metal and Deathcore.
Prior to this expansion, Deeds Of Flesh was a Band highly gifted in understanding songwriting and riffcraft, enabling them to structurize derivated riffs in a narrative manner. Riffs frantically switch between power chord massacres and chromatic tremolo picking as each song is kept in motion through gradual shifts in tempo and rhythm, suggesting what a combination of Deicide’s Legion and Suffocation’s Effigy Of The Forgotten could sound like. The only thing that remains constant is the rage within those songs.
Lyrically Gradually Melted does not explore new ideas, they stick to what was canon in Death Metal at the time, yet the lyrics work hand in hand with the music, as they are highly detailed and allow the vocalists Erik Lindmark and Jacoby Kingston to showcase a variety of techniques and display an amazing chemistry between call-and-response like growls and screams.
Guitars and Drums are rythmically complex, abrupt and alienating. Examplified by the Intro of Gradually Melted we hear familar rhythmical figures like syncopated rhythms yet the music feels so unnatural in the way it stops rapidly and continues to evolve. Joey Heaslet’s drumming appears to be an onslaught of blast beats for the whole duration of the EP. Further listening reveals there is more to his drumming than plain speed, the patterns work in favor of the guitars and overall feeling of the songs, as blast beats are frequent yet always appear only if the songs intensify, making us realize that this performance underlines the intensity Deeds Of Flesh put into their work and that proficiency is a tool and not a selling point.
Gradually Melted is flawless in sound and execution. The songs are compact, even as one dimensional as Death Metal can be, yet without any disadvantage and only gave us a glimpse of what’s to come.
Gradually Melted
The tires are hot enough
To even melt bone
Half burned apart
But still alive
Intestines now dangle out
Insides now start to pour
Civilians stare in his eyes, laughing at his gore
As I grow older, I find myself listening to Deeds of Flesh more than any other death metal band. More than any other they encapsulate that much bandied-about descriptor “abstract”: an open-ended dialogue posing question after question, and answers discovered only as you go along; completely divorced from any rock/speed influence from the 80s; absent of almost all melodic appeal yet a shining beacon of cold inhuman precision. All the while being violent, ugly, and muscular, as death metal above all else should always be. Call me heretic but I will put this above Suffocation even as THE quintessential “brutal” death metal band. RIP Erik Lindmark.