Germany’s longstanding Fleshcrawl satiate a hunger for ravenous death metal with their forthcoming full-length Epitome of Carnage. Released June 12 via Distortion Music Group (DMG), powered by Reigning Phoenix Music, the new album follows the 2019 offering Into the Catacombs of Flesh.
We caught up with the band for a track-by track breakdown of their new album in their own words.
“Blood Dominion” is our definitive statement. It is the ultimate teaser for what the album delivers: absolutely no mercy. The track captures the very core of Fleshcrawl—fast, raw, and straight in your face. It stands as an uncompromising, pure reflection of everything we represent as a band. Without any long-winded intros or filler, it hits the ground running and goes completely all-in from the very first note. The moment it kicks in, there is no mistaking what is coming: pure, unadulterated chaos. Born from a relentless flow of ideas, this song is the result of pure aggression taking shape naturally in the rehearsal room.
“Chapel of Guts” showcases the full spectrum of the Fleshcrawl sound. Standing apart from the more classic Swedish death metal tracks on the record, it provides the perfect contrast to the other singles and the album. Digging deep into the band’s roots, the track masterfully combines heavy, doomy passages with intense blast beats and massive dynamics. This is death metal with room to breathe—and then to choke. Much like the rest of the album, the song emerged naturally from a raw pool of ideas and riffs, developing its own devastating flow and energy during the writing process.
“Grave Messiah” is a relentless, textbook Fleshcrawl anthem. The track perfectly captures the band’s golden era, delivering a classic old-school Swedish death metal vibe that easily makes it one of the absolute standouts of the album. Lyrically, it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or offer poetic philosophy—and it doesn’t need to. Instead, it serves up pure, unapologetic death metal imagery centered around the “Priest of the Dead.” With grim, graphic lines like “Sermons stitched in bloated guts” and “Flesh is faith, and blood the creed,” the lyrics perfectly match the sonic violence of the music. It’s dark, gory, atmospheric, and exactly what a death metal track should be, in our opinion.
“Embers Of Wrath” acts as a counterweight to our other songs and is an outlier in the particularly brutal line-up of songs we have written for this album, with a slightly more laid-back, mid-tempo and melodic approach. Fleshcrawl was always known for mixing in the Gothenburg style melodies with the HM2 work on the previous albums, and this track also kind of pays homage to that specific element of the band that we’ve felt is just as important to preserve in our current and future work as it was in the past. Like the rest of the album, the song simply emerged from a variety of ideas and riffs. We didn’t force it into a specific direction; we just let the track develop its own flow and energy during the writing process.
“Committed to Suffer” is definitely a more personal one for us, and could be called cliche too, but it’s very universal theme of waking up one day eventually with all the trauma, and mental and physical scars you got along the way, and just refusing to cave under the pressure again, and instead giving it one last-ditch effort, whatever it may be that you are currently personally struggling with.
“Reign Forever” comes along as a fast and relentless steam hammer with some thrash metal and groovy influences here and there. The track is a bit of a homage to our old song “Reign Again” from the 2016 Tales of Flesh and Skin split CD and is also intended to stand out in memory of Sven Svenson Gross.
“Chronicles of Bloodshed – instrumental” is a short guitar interlude meant to provide a few seconds of rest to the listeners before the storm continues in full force!
“Rebuilt from Flesh” brings a mid-tempo, punkier edge to the record and is one of the oldest compositions in the set. It was finalized early in the songwriting process; it nonetheless blends effortlessly into the album’s cohesive sound. The lyrical concept deals with grim reanimation and an indifference to suffering—perfectly summed up by the recurring line, “The pain means nothing to me.” Melding vivid death metal prose like “Scraping remains once left in the rain” with a rock-solid, driving rhythm, the track injects a unique, high-energy dynamic into the album. It’s a gritty, defiant anthem where lines like “Rebuilt from Flesh, hail the obscene” deliver a massive, memorable punch.
“Orphan God” hits hard but keeps you guessing and brings plenty of variation. It offers traditional, straight-ahead Swedish death metal energy balanced out by a dark mood and doomy parts. The lyrics elevate the heavy instrumentation with an isolated, cosmic horror vibe, telling the story of a forgotten god drifting through a dead cosmos (“My name once a hymn … Now drowned in the static of infinite hells”). It’s a great mix of raw aggression and pitch-black atmosphere. With “Orphan God,” we definitely gave in a little bit to the old Gothenburg theme of star and space worship and we just wrote a short story about how lonely it must be if you’re the only one of your kind, just existing in the infinity of horrors of the universe, and eventually, as consequence, even questioning your own existence.
“Path of Thorns” is mainly about the complexity of how different people view the new age of social interactions and how fast and unnoticeably harmful it can become if left unattended.
“Heralds of Death”takes on war, which is an overlapping theme of the album, and somehow … This wasn’t originally intended. While working on the lyrics, we were kind of consumed with the constant barrage of negative news and doom worshipping going on all over media everywhere. This one’s about the fact that it doesn’t matter how big your ego gets and how many times you’re proven right in the process—Eventually it catches up with you.
“Of Fire and Flesh”—If you want a track to nod your head to, this is it. The song delivers a heavy, mid-tempo stomp that sets up the album’s grand finale. Instead of fading out quietly, the song drags itself into a suffocatingly slow and heavy ending to wrap up the record. Lyrically, the track acts as an apocalyptic anthem of unity and destruction. The recurring battle cry “We are of fire and flesh” binds the music and concept together as one relentless force. With lines like “We storm the gates, unchained, unbound / Ash and blood upon the ground,” this track builds a towering wall of sound that leaves the land burnt and the listener completely flattened by the time the final chord fades.
