Hi, everyone. Today, I’m reviewing the debut album by the band, Fleshwater, We’re Not Here to Be Loved.

I hadn’t heard of Fleshwater until the release of this album, but I saw a lot of critical acclaim for it, and I decided to check it out.

I’ve seen this album described as alternative metal, and while I’m bad at determining what genre different albums are, I will say that seems like a fitting description. It’s very heavy, and also features melodic vocals.

And after giving this album multiple listens, if I’m being honest, it’s not something I really see myself going back to.

I just feel like there’s not much about these songs that really stands out to me. I don’t find the hooks very catchy, and I find a lot of the melodies boring.

It’s not that I find this album annoying to listen to, I just find that it doesn’t really interest me all that much. They have their sound, and I understand why so many people love it, but it’s just not for me.

I want to start by talking about the closing track, “Foreign”, which is my favourite track on the album. I like the lyrics, even though I don’t really understand what they mean … but the passing of time seems to be a theme here. I also find this track interesting musically, with the way it progresses. I love the guitars in this song, too. But while I like this track, I’m not going to say it’s amazing or anything. I’m not a big fan of the mixing, with the drums being really quiet at points, and that does hold me back from liking it more.

But until the closing track, this album just isn’t my cup of tea. And one thing I’ve noticed that I’m not a big fan of on this album is a lot of the vocal mixing … I don’t like how quietly the vocals are mixed at some points on this album, like on “Baldpate Driver”, “Woohoo”, “Linda Claire”, “Kiss the Ladder”, “Enjoy”, and even “Foreign”. And it’s not that quietly mixed vocals are always an issue for me, especially in this kind of music, where a lot of the time, quietly mixed vocals help it click for me. But on this album, a lot of the instrumentals I don’t find all that interesting. For example, on “Baldpate Driver”, which has this noisy instrumental, which, at least to me, sounds very generic, and there’s not much melodically in the instrumentation that really clicks for me … and like I said, I don’t like how it drowns out the vocals.

While I often love distorted guitars, something in a lot of the distorted guitars here just doesn’t sound very good to me, and I’m not sure how to describe it. I notice this on songs like “Closet”, “The Razor’s Apple”, “Linda Claire”, “Kiss the Ladder”, and “Backstairs Breathing”. On these tracks, something about the guitar distortion just doesn’t work for me, and I can’t really tell what.

In the second half of this album, we get my two least favourite tracks here, one being “Kiss the Ladder” which isn’t even really a full song … it’s less than a minute and a half, and while I like the opening guitar melody, aside from that it doesn’t really do much for me.

Right after that is the song, “Enjoy”, which, at least to me, sounds very generic, with the boring vocal melodies and the intense guitars that don’t do much for me.

Overall, despite me liking the closing track, I’d rather just listen to that song than listen to the eight other tracks before finally getting to one song I like. So, as a full album, this just didn’t click for me.

I wanted to review this, because I gave it a few listens, and it’s a debut album by a metal band, and it didn’t seem like too much work for me to review, especially considering that it doesn’t give me a lot to say … but yeah, like I just said, it doesn’t give me a lot to say.

But, of course, as always, this is just how I feel about the album. For me, this is getting a 4.5/10. I don’t think it’s bad, but I don’t find it all that interesting. But I get the appeal of it.

Feel free to let me know in the comments how you feel about this album, and I’ll be back with more reviews soon! Thanks for reading!

Final Thoughts
Rating: 4.5/10
Favourite Tracks: “Foreign”
Least Favourite Tracks: “Kiss the Ladder”, “Enjoy”