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Accessibility in music is relative. A production choice to drop strident elements can open doors—or close them. A songwriting decision to blow up the arrangement with an unexpected halt, or inject a plodding track with a catchy chorus, can make a huge difference to audience reception. If Rick James were still alive, you could ask him about how the single-note synth line in “Superfreak” got him on Top 40 radio back in the day.
But with Georgetown, Massachusetts, band Fleshwater, the way its overall sound is crafted serves as an example of how relative accessibility is. In another time, the group would have been considered over the top, but certainly not in 2025, and doubly so in context of the fact that it grew out of a side project from Vein.fm, a heavier affair.
Still undergirded by metal riffing and hardcore aggression—yet given nuance and lightness via layered sounds—some of Fleshwater’s borrowed vocal deliveries have set it apart from its birthing band. There’s something shoegazey about Fleshwater’s sound, especially in the water-logged, heavily effected voices on the debut album, We’re Not Here to Be Loved (2022). The group also dabbles in what comes across like an accidental refraction of emo—just with much better taste and adult maturity.
At a bare minimum, you have to credit the band for its originality in execution. With big singles “Kiss the Ladder” and “Standalone” clocking in at just over one minute, Fleshwater has held on to punk values without explicitly reenacting its conventions, while shared female and male voices infuse it with an inimitable charm.
This year’s 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky veers a bit further into clearer production and more expected arrangement choices, but the main aesthetic is far from by the numbers.
Openers Chat Pile enlivens the evening with an Oklahoma-raised brand of destructo-noise metal, while post-hardcore Balmora starts the festivities with an equally enraged brand of music balancing tuneless vocal barking and harmonizing runs.
