Sun & Flesh

Rough and metallically textured yet elastic enough to be manipulated into a force for pop grooving when necessary, the riffing in Sun & Flesh’s new single and music video “Hell is People” is indebted to the bludgeoning chaos of thrash as much as it is the efficiency of punk. There’s an aesthetical equilibrium that immediately makes this track feel a little more diverse in tone than what a lot of mainstream hard rock and heavy metal bands have been producing in 2020, but if you’ve kept up with Sun & Flesh in the last six years, you’re probably expecting - and demanding - as much out of their new work.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunandflesh/ 

There’s a lot of old school rock n’ roll machismo to the stylization of the verses (and specifically the way they’re delivered) in “Hell is People” that I haven’t been able to get enough of since I first gave the song and its companion video a sit-down this week. Everything here centers on the preservation of volume and power, and while it might seem a little archaic to some millennial critics, others are likely to hear it for the unfortunately rare treat that it’s become in the past few years. 

 The beat in this song is, for the most part, rather unurgent beside the melodic components of the mix, but the drums are still able to impart a feeling of inescapable impending doom when it counts the most (the :50 mark is a good example). It’s pretty clear to me that indulgence of any kind wasn’t something that ever crossed the minds of Sun & Flesh when they were putting the bones for this track together - it’s three and a half minutes long, built like a slow-motion car wreck and heavier than anything you’re going to find on the FM dial without embracing the brown noise of a sludge-laden bassline. 

Rockers and metalheads the same should really make a point to check out the rhythm and heartily distorted harmonies Sun & Flesh are serving up liberally in their new single “Hell is People” and its music video, both of which were recently released in 2020 to a lot of praise from overdrive-deprived fans around the globe this past summer. I’ve got confidence in these guys moving forward, and if you go listen to “Hell is People” this fall, I think you’re going to understand precisely why I feel this way. 

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Trace Whittaker

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

9/2020