HYLI Vol. LXXXIX - Vitriol and Flesh Tape
The HYLI Boys tackle their respective favorite albums from January 2024: Andy picking Portland Death Metal and Patrick picking Denver shoegaze
Hello. How is 2024 treating you all? It’s fine here at HYLI Corp. Everyone on the planet has been sick at some point over the last month (Patrick: not true I’ve been the picture of health) or so and it’s finally my turn now. I hope you all have found some new music in 2024 to bring some joy to the monotony of life! I sure have. So has Patrick. So we’re going to share our favorite finds of January 2024. We have another playlist in the chamber so get ready for that in two weeks. Have fun and be good until then. Goodbye.
Vitriol - Suffer & Become
Andy: I love Vitriol. I think they’re one of the most underrated death metal acts around. I’ve been a fan since my time in college when they were deathcore outfit Those Who Lie Beneath and dropped the Antichrist EP. Their new album, Suffer & Become is definitely my favorite listen of January, right in front of Knoll’s new album.
This album is just absolutely, unapologetically pissed off (Patrick: it is certainly that). It is a wall of noise and yet so meticulously produced that everything is clear. Monstrous riffs, chaotic drumming, just absolutely unrelenting hatred from start to finish. A blitzkrieg. They supposedly put on a great show so they’re high on my list to see this year.
“Survival’s Careening Inertia” is an absolute banger of an instrumental (Patrick: I agree). I love Rasmussen and Roethlisberger’s vocals but the absence of them really elevates this track. It just goes. Surprisingly the lyrics here are pretty great for death metal. The music doesn’t take a break but the lack of vocals at least give you a moment to breathe before continuing with the relentless assault.
I can’t say enough good things about this album. It is simply just fantastic death metal. The orchestral parts that slip in help elevate some tracks to another level.
Patrick won’t like this album because it’s too fast and it scares him. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time and haven’t stopped spinning it since it dropped end of the month. Hope You Like It!
Patrick: I have half the mind to shit all over this since Andy was rude and assumed I would anyways. I liked it! Honestly, if it were like ten minutes shorter and they cut the last two tracks, I think I’d full-on love it! Fuck off, twerp!!
Perhaps part of my enthusiasm for this is due to our recent re-organization of the newsletter. When I was having to cram a new metal album every week and also have the extra credit assignments Andy would give me during the week … it got to be a bit much, looking back (Andy: Oh sorrrryyy for giving you too much good music smh). Having the extra week to give this some room to breathe really helped and lent to a more favorable overall feeling, I think, when going back for further listening.
I agree with Andy about “Survival’s Careening Inertia” being a highlight. I actually really enjoy the vocals here but having the midpoint be this breather, while also being simultaneously intricate and unhinged, was a nice change of pace. “The Isolating Lie of Learning Another” was another highlight, the middle of this record totally rips. The higher-pitched vocals in the middle of the track are my favorite vocals on the album.
As the album progressed, low vocals boy kinda wore on me. I found myself liking them the first third of the album or so and was going to come in here all snarky about how much I’ve grown and then there was like 20 minutes left of the album and dude beat the will out of me. I still don’t think they’re bad and listening to some of the latter tracks isolated on their own and outside of the scope of the record helped. But we are judging the albums as a whole here and, as a whole, it wore on me. Still good! I liked it! Leave me alone!!
Flesh Tape - Flesh Tape
Patrick: I’m going to give this record plenty of flowers in its own right but, first, I wanted to highlight some other records from January: 1) Katy Kirby - I hated this record and was bored to tears at first and then it sunk its teeth in me and now I find myself humming along to “Cubic Zirconia” while I’m doing the dishes; 2) The Smile - good, not great, probably what I’ve listened to the most but I also skip half the album and there are only nine songs; Bill Ryder-Jones - Submarine-soundtrack-core, I quite enjoy, first runner-up (Andy: I did this during our mid-year-2023 list and you absolutely tore me to shreds you hypocrite).
Okay, Flesh Tape. Flesh Tape! This fucking rocks! I have been a mutual on X formerly known as Twitter with Larson for a while, as we are both fans of the podcast Endless Scroll and are in the Scrollscord, but I didn’t know he was batting this shit around (Andy: What are you guys called? Scrollies? Scrollheads?). Holy cow! So many bands flirt with the notion of being inspired by Sonic Youth but next to none of them actually take the parts of what made SY interesting (look beyond the crazy tunings, I beg you). Flesh Tape captures that better than most.
The guitar sounds unreal. Fuck! Guitars!!! They’re so cool. There are many cool bands in the Denver scene right now and a commonality between all of them is knowing how to make guitars sound fucking sick, brother. The riff on “Life in Debt.” C’mon! As someone who plays guitar, I love hearing a song where I have no fucking clue what’s going on with the guitar and “Life in Debt” immediately made me burst into a smile when the riff kicked in (Andy: I stank faced but same difference).
To move on from gushing about a goofy six-stringed instrument, Larson’s voice sounds great too. There’s a perfect mix of Rick from Pile and stuff going on with other bands in the shoegaze scene like Hotline TNT but also feeling like its own unique character. Man, I can’t say enough about this record. Listen to “Horizon Pt. 1” and you’ll be hooked for the full record. Hell yeah. Hope You Like It.
Andy: Flesh Tape! What a metal name. Great name. That’s good because it’s also great music! And great album art! Glad they got the whole thing together! When Patrick said “Listen to ‘Horizon Pt. 1 and you’ll be hooked” he wasn’t lying. He does get stuff right every once in a while.
“Life in Debt” is so good. Might be my favorite song here, just edging out “Horizon Pt.1.” Actually, “Horizon Pt.2” is just as good as Pt.1. The riff at the end of Pt.2 is hypnotic in the best way. It could have gone on for hours and I would have been happy. “Hammer Blow to the Back of the Head” is great. I know literally nothing about pedals and how that makes things sound good but whatever these guys have makes some killer fuzz noises. Guitar sorta sounds like a chainsaw in a non-death metal way. I love the tones on “Ouch.” It’s just so in your face in a cool way.
I love it when Patrick picks an album where the guitar just does sick guitar things. Metal always has guitars doing sick guitar things but in a metal way, so it’s always fun when you hear a guitar do different sick guitar things. Does that make sense? I love it when the guitar does sick guitar things. This album has plenty of guitars doing sick guitar things. The whole record is weird and loud and fun, just like the guitars and both of the albums we picked this week are great ‘bounce your feet along to the bass drum’ albums for very different reasons.
Good pick to get us back in the groove by Patrick. I Very Much Enjoyed It. Give me more. Why can’t I buy merch for the band Flesh Tape?