The way to be outstanding today in Metal is to be creative. It doesn't matter if you're creating a new Metal genre or not, you must earn guts and personality to follow your own path, to write the things according with your heart, and not with what others have to say. That's the way of the Italian trio FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, that surprises the entire Metal world with "King", and now they're back with their latest and outstanding album, "Veleno" (the Italian for "venom").

It's a great injustice label their musical work as Symphonic/Technical Death Metal. Their music is greater than that, bigger and rich in conceptions and musical ideas. It's like a Death Metal Opera being played to the listener, using even orchestral elements, opera choirs, complex melodies, contrast between different vocal tunes (clean, guttural, female tunes, whispered, and much more)  and tons of creative power to make such high level form of music. It's amazing that such band with a classical conceptual idea on music using its efforts to create extreme Metal, and it's really wonderful. Jacob Hansen mixed and mastered "Veleno", and to build something that could sound extreme, heavy and brutal, but bearing such set of classical elements is a hard trial. But everything sounds great, with the right instrumental tunes. And in the chaotic myriad of creativeness of the band, it's really great!

With a set of invited musicians to record the classical parts, "Veleno" came to be one of the best albums of this year. "Fury" bears the right balance between opera elements and heavy Metal influences, but the tempos are amazing (bass guitar and drums are really amazing during the entire album). The mix between brutal moments with classical melodies is great on "Carnivorous Lamb" (the contrasts between vocals' tunes is really excellent, a good surprise on each minute of the song). Brutality and instrumental technique are mixed in an amazing and charming musical cauldron called "Sugar" (the classic music elements are amazing, especially the choirs), and on the melodic and Ultra Romantic "Monnalisa" (if Lord Byron played guitars, this song would be written by him, because the contrast between clean parts and melodic tempos is amazing). "Worship and Forget" is focused on musical brutality, using fast tempos, but the classical minimalism is presented on some arrangements. The influences from Baroque/Ultra Romantic music appear once more on the violent "Absinthe" (very good work from guitars once more) and on "Pissing on the Score" (where their Technical Death Metal side becomes a bit more evident). A rough set of orchestral melodies and elements is presented on "The Day We'll Be Gone", where pianos and female opera voices reign supreme contrasts with grunts. On "Embrace the Oblivion", the band again focus on a more economic musical approach, focusing on guitars, bass, drums, keyboards and harsh voices, but melodies arise during the guitar solo. "The Praying Mantis' Strategy" and "Veleno" are short songs with instrumental focus (although the first one presents opera choirs).

"Veleno" is an album completely immersed on Baroque/Ultra Romantic artistic expressions, so FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE shows that their music deserves to be enjoyed fully. And please: don't you dare to compare their music to any other band, for their music is unique! And as final words: here in Brazil, "Veleno" was released by the partnership between Shinigami Records and Nuclear Blast Brasil, with two bonus songs!