It’s hard to believe it’s already been two and a half years since I had the immense pleasure of reviewing UK outfit Pupil Slicer’s 2023 prog-mathcore opus Blossom. If their 2021 debut Mirrors hit—as I said back then—like a runaway lorry on the M3, and Blossom hit more deftly and softly while wearing its titular multicolored bloom just below the surface, then this week’s offering, Fleshwork, is returning to the ring with a practiced brutality reminiscent of three MMA fighters locked in a polyrhythmic Muay Thai-style bob and weave.
A lot has changed in the UK in the last two years, particularly for transgender people. A relatively low-turnout election in 2024 ended 14 years of Tory-led dysfunction, only for a barely-resurgent Labour Party to continue the madness in earnest by attempting to outflank the Tories and the insurgent Reform UK from the right, with future PM hopeful Wes Streeting’s NHS becoming the most coolly hostile towards transgender Brits in contemporary memory and an activist Supreme Court recently ruling in favor of de facto nationwide bathroom restrictions that rival anything on the books in 2025 Texas. If you’re shocked to see the UK mentioned in the same breath as the political and economic pressure cooker that’s most recently fueled a veritable flood of brutal and forward thinking nu-metal acts in the Dallas-Fort Worth scene, a listen through Fleshwork alongside bands like UnityTX or Empty Shell Casing may clarify a thing or two.
All this to say, Kate Davies has a lot to be pissed about this time around. And listen, that’s never not been true—this band put a song called “Panic Defense” on their first album, and I’ve known enough about the US legal system to understand the reference since before I even knew I was trans. There is a life worth living beyond that particular level of black-pilled, a unique freedom that comes from staring a hostile government and mass media apparatus in the face and calling their bluff with a well-timed “okay, bet.” Fleshwork is an album by and for those who live and breathe that freedom.
Opener “Heather” kicks off hard straight out of the gate, with an intensity that will appeal to anyone who heard “Virus://Vibrance” by Vein.fm in 2018 and rapidly remembered metal could fucking do that—but with a firmly 2020s nugaze flair. “Gordian” keeps the pace with a brutal constantly-shifting intro and some tightly-executed half-time grooves before snapping your neck with a polyrhythmic bounce riff complete with discordant harmonics at the thirty-minute mark—which may be my personal favorite moment on the album.
“Sacrosanct,” which got its own music video release on Friday to accompany the album release, is another clear standout in an album full of them, beginning with thunderous half-time brutality that permutates and evolves into new and exciting forms of aggression over the next three minutes. The next track, “Innocence,” opens with an insistent bounce riff and downright sinister clean vocals from Davies which are incredibly reminiscent of other transfemme pioneers in hoe-n’-bro-scaring music like Nu England’s own ameokama. (Look up “phantom cock” off her brilliant and challenging genre-agnostic solo album from this past February to get an idea of what I’m talking about here.)
It is difficult to convey just how tight and well-executed these songs really are—Kate Davies has a top-tier rhythm section and songwriting partners in founding drummer Josh Andrews and new bassist/backing vocalist Luke Booth. Any fears I had about the future of the band’s low end after the departure of Blossom-era secret weapon Luke Fabian in late 2023 were quickly dispelled once I heard Booth in his element. He’s far from afraid to play off the root note and generally bubble and pop and add a veritable wealth of harmonic complexity to Kate’s riffs—some of his touches in the simplest, most brutally straightforward parts of “Sacrosanct” are brilliant examples.
The back half of the album covers so many subgenres in the blink of an eye—everything from the characteristic black metal and post-rock nods to a new wave tribute on “White Noise” and an honest-to-goodness Midwest Emo detour on “Nomad.” Album closer “Cenote” comes in just shy of eight minutes and is the only track on the album that comes remotely close to that length, featuring some tasteful bass melodies from Luke Booth, shoegaze worshipping layered vocals and beautiful arpeggios from Davies, and expert on-a-dime shifts from black metal blast beats to nugaze grooves from Andrews behind the kit.
This trio has always been an incredibly heavy and brilliantly creative band, but Fleshwork is the first album from them where I don’t need to take any creative liberties or slip my characteristic “hear me out” histrionics past our editors to make the case that this band is firmly in our wheelhouse. Pupil Slicer has dug deep and delivered the seemingly impossible—an album even more enjoyable than Blossom—while simultaneously blessing us with their most unabashedly nu-metal material to date. When I hear this music, it reminds me who I am. When I hear this music, it makes me feel like I can fight a conspicuously terfy kaiju with my bare hands, dodging blows and landing counterstrikes in perfect sync with the polyrhythmic breakdowns. When I hear this music, it’s like coming up for air, the way it felt to see myself in a full face of makeup for the first time—the newfound sense of what is possible right here, right now, in this moment.
In short? The shit fucking goes.
Fleshwork is out now via Prosthetic Records.
