Fleshwater
2000: In Search of the Endless Sky
CLOSED CASKET
To paraphrase a movie from the genre’s heyday, alt-rock is having a strange time in its life right now. It seems to be pushing itself forward, as seen in the throw-everything-at-the-wall pop of Water From Your Eyes, the dizzying ambition of Spirit of the Beehive, or the metamodern quirks of Alex G. However, revivalism is equally widespread, nowhere more so than in the grungegaze style that’s really taken hold in the post-pandemic era. Alongside its most definitive practitioners, such as Narrow Head and Soul Blind, adjacent acts like Bleed and Split Chain have also arisen that infuse nu- and alt-metal into this music and its broader aesthetic. A lot of this stuff is, to put it bluntly, dull, unambitious, and depressingly regressive.
Yet Fleshwater are the most interesting act to have come out of this quasi-genre. Though they’re obviously nowhere near as seminal, think of their relationship to the genre like the one that their recent tourmates Deftones have with nu metal: transcending categorization by virtue of being more unique, vibrant, and emotionally intelligent than their peers. Fleshwater’s music heavily draws on the same era—Deftones’ imagistic color, Hum’s viscous heaviness, Smashing Pumpkins’ textural majesty—only it’s done in a far less literal fashion, meaning a lucid personality bleeds through their fabric. Their second full-length, 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky, sees them really settle on their sound: soaring vocals, treble-heavy guitars, a balancing of frantic energy with moody heaviness and an overall tone of passionately charged emo splendor.
Fleshwater has shared several members with the metalcore act Vein.fm, and numerous highlights on 2000 cover similar ground to this project. “Jerome Town” sounds like a track by Vein.fm layered with tear-stained melancholy, making great use of screamed vocals, interlocking grooves, and a short but scintillating closing breakdown. Drummer Josian Omar Soto Ramos is the key to the album’s singular, jittery energy. His work, which rarely takes a simple, unembellished path, imbues these 10 tracks with a restlessness that complements the big-hearted feelings of cuts like “Raging Storm” and “Last Escape.” Vocalist Marisa Shirar also comes into her own here, her versatile, powerful voice sending opener “Drowning Song” into the emo stratosphere.
The album’s impassioned urgency is undeniable here. The only question lingering over Fleshwater’s latest is about whether or not it feels genuinely singular enough to linger long in the memory. On the scale of boundary-pushing to nostalgic, 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky probably falls right in the middle. You can very much see the shadow of their influences, but the band brings more than enough of their own identity to make their well-crafted new album feel punchy, vivid, and dripping with soul-clasping feeling.
