Perugia, Italy · symphonic death metal · technical death metal

Fleshgod Apocalypse

2 festivals played ↓

Italian death metal with a full orchestral apparatus and an operatic streak played completely straight — tuxedos, corpse paint, and blastbeats in formalwear.

Francesco Paoli, formerly frontman of Hour of Penance, founded Fleshgod Apocalypse in Perugia in April 2007. Early independent recordings, starting with the demo Promo '07, led to a deal with Willowtip Records and the 2009 debut Oracles, by which point Paoli had moved from drums to lead vocals and guitar within the band's shifting lineup.

The group builds technical death metal around full orchestral arrangements and operatic soprano vocals, treating the combination with complete seriousness. Classical training runs through the lineup, and the writing borrows structural ideas from opera and Romantic orchestral music while keeping blastbeats and growled vocals at the centre.

Pianist and orchestrator Francesco Ferrini joined full-time around the making of 2011's Agony, the album that brought the band to Nuclear Blast. Two years later, Labyrinth arrived as a concept record built around the myth of the Labyrinth of Knossos and its parallels to modern life.

Onstage the band performs in formalwear and heavy corpse-style makeup, presenting the whole show as theatre rather than novelty. Touring history includes support slots with acts such as Suffocation, Decapitated and The Black Dahlia Murder, along with a run on the Summer Slaughter tour.

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symphonic death metaltechnical death metal