So, I know very little about Liquid Flesh, save to say that they are a three-piece band from France. This would appear to be their second album, and I really wasn’t sure what I was going to be in for. The album cover looks like an eighties B-Division thrash band cover, but that really hasn’t prepared me for what I have got inside it.

“Chair Liquide” is actually a really fun album. I’m not sure if the lads from Liquid Flesh would thank me for describing their work as “fun”, but that’s exactly what it is. There is something about the sound that you get from a good quality trio of players that’s hard to replicate. In this case, the lads have got extreme metal but in a fairly raw and rock n’ roll kind of way. While it’s pretty hard to explain the sound of the band, I’d say that a fairly accurate way of describing them would be equal parts Autopsy, with the sickening lurch of the bass, the straight forward, middle-finger-in-your-face drum and bass attack of Motorhead, the weird Sci-Fi touches of early Voivod, and some of that barely-coherent-but-still-great early Celtic Frost (especially on the title track).

I lost count of the times that I had a big old grin on my face while listening to this. The title track, in particular, is just bags and bags of great influences put in a blender. In one moment, they sound like Necrophagia and Autopsy were fighting in a Hessian sack, the next just channelling their best Morbid Tales primal urges, complete with Tom G Warrior “UUURGH”.

The hero of the day for me is the tremendously monikered “Putrid Bruce”, with the bass work and vocals. The four stringer really does form the centre piece of all of the songs, with the other two instruments coming in as support. At their best, they really do conjure up images of Motorhead doing their thing; the punk vibe and raw edge to the sound really working well alongside the inventiveness of the song construction. I actually found Liquid Flesh to have some fantastic song-writing chops. To them, it seems, the song is king, and not the heaviness or the technicality of playing (though they aren’t slouches on their kit). The spasming weirdness of “Toxic Blues”, as an example, with the discordant guitar work and the flinching bass really make it a memorable listen.

Production wise, it’s perhaps a little thin here and there, but the raw edge is preserved really well, and keeps that snot-nosed sound ever present. It’s a curious album in as far as it really draws together disparate influences well, and on occasion it can feel as if the kitchen sink has been thrown into the mix, but somehow it manages to cling onto order among the chaos.

Give this a listen folks, it’s almost certain to make you grin.

(8/10 Chris Davison)

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https://liquidfleshdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/chair-liquide