No more Realdolls, now it's time for Fleshdoll! "Why Fleshdoll over Realdoll?" you ask. The answer is: Just because it's nicer to bang to it... And now onto review. This French band, who formed back in 2001, return with their sophomore album 'Animal Factory'. What I've heard of their debut album '[W.O.A.R.G]' from 2005 are just three four, and they all are brutal death metal.

'Animal Factory' is extreme metal, even though its colourful and sludge-ish cover artwork might make one think otherwise. Can extreme metal be fun? Well, yes it can, because this album is. This isn't stupid "nursery rhymes played brutally" style crap, no. The music and the band just emit, well, fun! On their Facebook profile (couldn't find much of other info about 'em), the band list Agressor, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Testament, Kreator, Nile, Sadus, Immolation, Napalm Death, Carcass, Anata, Insision, Bolt Thrower and Motörhead as their influences.

'No Beast so Fierce' and 'The Animal Factory' open the album with thrash-mating-with-death vibes. Both songs have pretty ugly, in a good sense as it's extreme metal after all, riffing (also gore death ones) and bits, and they are also quite catchy. 'Bite Me Fan Boy' begins fast, but its infectiously groovy stuff after one-minute mark is very welcome department from all deathrashing before it. I might add, that it's also darned catchy. With 'L.P.S.' it is time for faster stuff again with some bad-ass 1-2-3-4 rock beats, even though purely in full metal jacket. 'HeroPsychoMartyr' mixes groovy and blasting bits. 'Go Dig Your Grave in the Sand' is an okay blaster, which decelerates into heavy melodic part in the middle, something similar to Slayer's 'Seasons in the Abyss's opening. 'Horror, Moral, Terror' fails to bring anything new into going-ons, as it's a fast song with heavier melodic part in the middle. After three clearly weaker, or more like unsurprising song, 'Sweet Apocalypse' closes the album with style with its freakier composition. None of the songs are junk, however.

The vocals consist of low guttural growling, which is powerful and able. I guess, thanks to the promo copy without covers etc., that the lyrics are about real life shite (like Gorefest, Napalm Death e.g.). The band's performance is very much skillful, but with nothing very technical things heard. It's more about feeling. Sadly the production is a tad too clinical, which is so ordinary these days.

Surely, one can hear elements from aforementioned influencing bands' styles (and I'd add Aborted into the group). Fleshdoll have mixed their own kind of soup from good metal music, and managed to make it taste good. It is rare, when genre fence jumping is this much fun and successful. And they didn't stick their bodily extensions into a whore called metalcore, so points for that. 'Animal Factory' is like a missing link, a genetically altered beast, between old school and modern death and thrash metal. This is good-time deathrash metal with balls, and while it's not a "classic in the making", it's a good spin every now and then.

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
01/04/2011 20:40