Sylosis to drop new album on February 20th titled ‘The New Flesh’ out from Nuclear Blast Records. New single ‘Lacerations’ now in rotation here on NFR! Press release from Nuclear Blast:
When the going gets tough, metal gets heavier. SYLOSIS have always been devoted to the fine art of breaking necks, but in recent times, the urgency of their mission has grown exponentially. Still surfing on a wave of acclaim and the effusive fan response to their last album, 2023’s A Sign Of Things To Come, Josh Middleton’s virtuoso wrecking crew are poised to release their latest and best album, The New Flesh. A towering testament to destructive riffing, incisive melody and refined brute force, the band’s seventh full-length offering is a powerful showcase for the state of SYLOSIS in 2025: lethal, uncompromising, and avowedly metal as all hell.
“The last album was like a transitional period in terms of coming to grips with a new way of writing,” says Middleton. “We’ve been thinking more about what’s going to be fun for us to play and what’s going to land better, and that became evident from playing the new stuff live. I think back to being a teenager and the first band practice, when you crank amps up loud, and the feeling you get, that excitement and energy, and we’re trying to put that into the music.”
Sylosis have been hacking away at metal’s enduring coalface for the last 25 years. They exploded into the metal scene with their 2008 debut album Conclusion Of An Age, and have been repeatedly upping the ante for homegrown heaviness ever since. From the epic, thrash complexity of 2011’s Edge Of The Earth and its swiftly-assembled follow-up Monolith in 2012, to the bruised and brooding Dormant Heart (2015), and 2020’s deliriously intense Cycle Of Suffering, Middleton and his henchmen have been consistently at the forefront of all things heavy and brutal throughout their career. As they approach veteran status, Sylosis have sharpened their focus and are now making their greatest music yet. As with The Sign Of Things To Come, Middleton believes that The New Flesh is a bold leap forward into more incisive and impressive songwriting territory.
“This time, we booked the studio before a lot of the finishing touches and final arrangements were done,” explains the frontman. “In the last few weeks before the studio, there was the pressure to make every song incredible, and it was that last five or ten percent that really made them better. Those memorable moments came out at the last minute. Working under more of a time restraint definitely helped. I look back at the last album, and I thought it was going to be hard to top, but now I listen to the new one and it’s way better! I feel great about how it’s come out.”
The New Flesh is a fearsome statement of renewed intent. Harder, heavier and more ruthless than its predecessor, it is full of the kind of explosive, riff-driven anthems that guarantee carnage in the pit. But this is no exercise in mindless bludgeon: instead, Middleton has penned his most evocative and thought-provoking songs to date. From the punishing grooves and breakneck viciousness of the opening Beneath The Surface, to the epic conflagration of album closer Seeds In The River, The New Flesh is an artful and nuanced take on the pure fucking metal that Sylosis hold close to their hearts. This is brutality and catchiness in perfect symbiosis.
“That’s what I live for, yeah! But I’ve always liked bands or songs that do both things,” he explains. “Slipknot’s People = Shit is super heavy, but it’s an anthem. Or like The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera, which has an anthemic chorus but it’s super heavy. It’s not purely about trying to be anthemic for success, but that sort of anthemic side of things is memorable. When it sticks in your head, you go back to it.”
Although The New Flesh is an album with ferocity in its heart, it is also the most emotionally supercharged album that Sylosis have made. This is particularly evident from Everywhere At Once: a devastating ballad, with lyrics that recount Josh Middleton’s disquiet at the prospect of leaving his young children to hit the road. A surefire show-stopper, it reflects more elegant and sophisticated elements in the band’s updated sound, while demonstrating that perceived stylistic boundaries are destined to be broken from time to time. The New Flesh is also partly driven by their leader’s horror at the state of the world, and fury at the increasing malevolence of mundane humanity.
“Circle Of Swords is about the feeling that everyone’s out to get you,” Middleton notes. “There are some vicious songs on this album, about people I’ve come into contact with. I’ve spent a lot of our career doing a lot of ‘Woe is me, aren’t I terrible?’ songs but I’m more like ‘Fuck you, everyone!’ in my old age! [Laughs] The title, The New Flesh, is about coming to terms with the fact that we’re all going to die, and hopefully death is something greater, if it’s not nothingness. But even nothingness could be quite a nice thing after all this! [Laughs] Being a dad now, I’m thinking about dying and mortality and stuff, but yeah, I’m also thinking about David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, and ‘All hail the new flesh!’ and certain aspects of that movie.”
Dark and destructive, but dynamic and diligent, Sylosis are on blistering, career-best form on The New Flesh. The purposeful reset that began with The Sign Of Things To Come has evolved into something unstoppable, and the band’s latest work brims with confidence and authority. If it’s skull-shattering, 21st century heavy metal you want, The New Flesh brings it like never before.
“Everything’s been going well to this point, and we’ve come back pretty strong, so we just want to show people that we’re offering something special,” Middleton concludes. “There’s a hole in the metal world, of just good metal. There’s so much cookie cutter bullshit on streaming playlists, so I think there’s enough good riffs on this album to win people over! I rarely hear anything and think ‘That’s a great riff’. My background is riff worship, studying riffs and trying to create as many great ones as possible!”
‘The New Flesh’ track listing:
01 – Beneath The Surface
02 – Erased
03 – All Glory, No Valour
04 – Lacerations
05 – Mirror Mirror
06 – Spared From The Guillotine
07 – Adorn My Throne
08 – The New Flesh
09 – Everywhere At Once
10 – Circle Of Swords
11 – Seeds In The River
