Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork
Release Date: 7th November 2025
Label: Prosthetic Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Mathcore
FFO: Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Heriot.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Pupil Slicer is the perfect name for a band of this caliber: violent, chaotic, tense, crafting songs of a viscerally powerful nature, likely to have the same physical impact on a listener that imagining a sliced pupil would. These UK Mathcore titans have released two pieces of intensity thus far, and Fleshwork feels like another step forward, the band still hell-bent on extreme dynamics and sharp musicality while also allowing melody to creep in, a sonic necessity given the lyrical content, society and its issues. The band manages to convey such important and relevant lyrics while also maintaining their breakneck brand of metal, heavy words for heavy music.
And in speaking of heavy music, the band wastes no time in warming us up with opener Heather. Immediately we’re hit with a jarring, jagged riff that is oddly accessible, the unpredictable sound meshing with the razor sharp vocals and feedback. Its immediacy, as though the band wants us at attention, to both wake us up with instant heaviness and keep us glued with a surprisingly catchy hook. In line with this line of thinking, Gordian continues with angular, sharp riffs interspersed with noise, the musical complexity sharing space with quieter, more ambient soundscapes while still demonstrating their masterful technical capabilities.
In a rare moment of reprieve that is not a filler track, Sacrosanct punishes with doom, an extended scream followed closely by glacial riffs, the band not afraid to stay heavy while reducing their pace to a comparable crawl. What stands out here, apart from the obvious shift in tempo, is how the rhythm section shines, providing the crushing weight that was swapped in for high intensity chaos.
While already recognized as a ferociously heavy band, it is with the track Nomad that the band is at their most chaotic on the record: blast beats and tremolo riffs transition into post-hardcore soundscapes, ultimately weaving ambience into the mix, the song an amalgamation of everything the band has done all compressed into one track of musical insanity, bordering on unsettling. Title track Fleshwork and closer Cenote help finish the album in a punishing way. The former features massive, punchy riffs and a simpler structure to digest, introducing a bit of psychedelia into the mix, lesser in chaos but heavy in how it hits. Meanwhile, the latter, at nearly 8 minutes in length, features a quiet buildup followed by black metal ferocity, a viciousness bolstered by the lyrical content, which is purported to be about marginalization in the UK, along with their disability system, an all too familiar topic to a great many listeners. Heavy in more than just riffs, Pupil Slicer wrote lyrics to match the music (or music to match the lyrics), and what came out is a blistering indictment of the societal dynamic wherein certain groups of people are perpetually fighting for even the most basic of things. The band clearly wanted to make a statement, and with Cenote, they nailed it.
With Fleshwork, Pupil Slicer has hit listeners in a multitude of ways: musical and lyrical maturation, songwriting growth and, above all, that ever present raucous energy, enough to power some small countries. Pupil Slicer had yet to miss, and with Fleshwork, they knocked it out of the park.
(4.5 / 5)
