Titled "Obstinacy: Sisyphean Dreams Unfolded," FLESHVESSEL's second full-length album surpasses their already delirious 2023 debut, "Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed," in creative madness. The new album continues their exploration, drawing on an avant-garde style that transcends genre boundaries. Death metal, black metal, and jazz metal are encompassed under the broad umbrella of the most intense, technical, and expressive progressive music.
Throughout the four lengthy tracks of "Obstinacy: Sisyphean Dreams Unfolded," FLESHVESSEL seem possessed. A kaleidoscope of colors pours forth from the rich instrumentation employed, which includes, among others, acoustic and electric guitars, flute, clarinet, piano, synthesizer, viola, and a multitude of exotic instruments. The vocals are also impressive and over the top, alternating deep growls and heavy metal falsettos, tying together bone-crushing death metal grooves and airy melodic landscapes into complex prog-style harmonic structures.
"I like to think of Obstinacy as the sister album to Yearning," comments FLESHVESSEL guitarist Alexander Torres. "However, where Yearning was a large, vast, impressionist take on humanity's strife within the world, Obstinacy hones in both musically and thematically. The title is another reference to the Greek myth of Sisyphus and his punishment to eternally push a boulder up a massive hill. With this in mind, the title becomes a statement about our own stubbornness/persistence as human beings and how it can be both a detriment to, or deliverance from, our collective and individual struggle for a better world."