“Where the gangsters groove and the slams are smooth.”
With summer coming to a close, there aren’t many opportunities left for an idyllic evening cruise. If you’re looking for a fresh idea, here’s a suggestion: Take a massive dab rip, proceed to your car, lower the side skirts until you start scraping pavement, turn the bass to its maximum setting, tailgate a Cybertruck all the way to the fast food strip with your hand on the horn, order a Famous Bowl Fill Up Combo from KFC, do donuts in the parking lot while scarfing down chicken and waffles, and zoom off into the night, all whilst blaring Slamming Gangster Groove proprietors PeelingFlesh.
Slam tends to be a ridiculed branch of death metal in the contemporary scene. This is largely due to an increasing number of ectomy-suffixed acts whose sole purpose is to make people laugh with TikTok reel samples and provide haphazard instrumentals that fail to create any supplemental weight and only exacerbate cognitive decline. We all know it: slam isn’t meant to be taken too seriously unless you’re Devourment or Drowned Under Concrete. That being said, many groups suffer from an inability to sound good from a purely musical standpoint on top of being overly corny. Ultimately, this is most likely intentional. Bands that sample potty-humor-laced clips probably aren’t looking to land a record deal. If you’re going to lean into such connotations, you had better, at the very least, know how to deliver proper sonic backdrops. PeelingFlesh are one such anomaly.
Nine EPs and a recent debut album are quite an extensive catalog for a band that’s only been around for four years. Perhaps even more impressive than the pace PeelingFlesh has kept is their persistent blend of hip-hop that has proven to be effective time and time again. Talk to anyone who is even a slight proponent of this fiercely guarded realm, and chances are they would balk at the mention of rap-infused slam. Yet somehow, PeelingFlesh have not only managed to coin their own trademark brand of slamming brutal death metal but are arguably at the very top of the gold food chain. PeelingFlesh, akin to their cross-genre counterparts, have crafted their true mixtape with PF Radio 2.
While PeelingFlesh has remained aligned with the continued usage of sampling that dominates much of slam, a distinct separator between them and their constituents is a clear aptitude for crushing delivery. Parallel to their moniker, PeelingFlesh posses a skin-scraping style that isn’t heard from anyone else in this space. Whether it’s a product of Mychal Soto’s masterful production or PeelingFlesh’s collective prowess, their entire body of work has felt and sounded like a flaying festival. Want more of those Joe Pelletier kitchen pot snare bombs and riff scalping from Soto and Jason Parrish? PF Radio 2 offers this medley of tire burnouts to the intestines in a much more sadistic fashion. “Redacted” serves as the perfect appetizer before “Chanel Zero” mows down pedestrians with some of the best sustained pinch harmonics you’ll hear this year.
Another improved consistency on PF Radio 2 is the slower-tempo cadence PeelingFlesh predominantly operates at. At less than twenty-five minutes in runtime, this EP certainly feels longer than that due to the keelhauling speed of each track. “Holdin” and “Midnight” are over quickly, but fortunately take a long time to get there on the heels of acid-drip hooks and fills. Only to be amplified by Damonteal Harris’ Mordor orc vocals, PF Radio 2 is a fast blade strike to the torso that takes a long time to dig its way out.
It’s very nice of PeelingFlesh to name a song after all of us. “Autistimus Prime” serves as both the anthem of the modern cranium and the strongest burst of slamming shotgun shells on PF Radio 2. For those with even a smidgen of the ‘tism, this one is for you. Opening with a live country artist intro, mental dissonance reaches an all-time high once a volley of gravity bong blast beats and Kiriakos Destounis’ featured sewage line gutturals kick in. PeelingFlesh may have released their most punishing hit-and-run yet, but they at least had the decency to serenade those who struggled writing their names with a pencil taped to their heads growing up.
PeelingFlesh’s tasteful integration of rap has never wavered either. Both structurally and artistically, this has always felt like a constant ode to their foundational influences. Introduction, bridge, outro; it doesn’t matter. Each song on the album, excluding the sample-heavy “Introlude”, “Middlelude”, and “Outrolude”, incorporates hip-hop clips that are functionally appropriate and musically superb in their own right. Even a pivot to soul music sampling on “Flesh Cathedral”, which of course follows a church choir harmonizing PeelingFlesh’s name and telling us to “Get your fucking hands up”, is paradoxically brain-melting yet elegant all the same. It would be one thing if PeelingFlesh melded vastly different types of music together for the sake of qualifying a running joke. That’s a very small part of what is transpiring here and has become their bread and butter.
PeelingFlesh have a lot to hang their snapback-fitted heads on. Despite rigorous touring and a discography that is already fairly sizable, they continue to refine their sound with every release and have deservingly ascended to the very top of slam’s ranks. The results speak for themselves; it’s no accident PeelingFlesh has made it this far. Many will scrutinize their ascension, and maybe there’s a decent case to be made for why that is. They don’t necessarily coincide with all the concrete ideals of slam, but execute it better than most, nonetheless. PF Radio 2 winds up as PeelingFlesh’s crown jewel and a shining example of what happens when calculated risks work out for the very best.
9/10
PF Radio 2 releases on September 26 via Unique Leader Records and can be pre-ordered here.