A Flourishing Scourge: metal from the state of Washington. U.S.

A Flourishing Scourge: As Beauty Fades Away

Recently I have been following a bit of the developments around this band A Flourishing Scourge, a group from the Seattle/Snohomish County region. They played a show in Arlington some weeks ago and it looks like they have been busy lining up some more concerts. In addition, they have done something very exciting: they now have their debut EP for a September 2015 release.

Now, thanks to the band sending in a copy of the EP “As Beauty Fades Away,” there’s more to report about the band. I sort of had an idea what the music was going to sound like, having heard the band on ReverbNation previously, but it’s a different experience when you pop in the cd in the car and give it a few spins. I did not realize how ambitious this music would be. In my opinion, A Flourishing Scourge is fundamentally an early-Opethian metal band in spirit. Prog is the basis, and black and death metal are the pillars of A Flourishing Scourge.

The music has its own niche going because prog bands usually do not embrace black metal and death metal this fully, and death and black bands tend to shy away from the melody and mellow aspects of prog. That is why I point to early Opeth as a reference, the Opeth of the first two albums “Orchid” and “Morningrise” when the band sounded like it was in its own little world, before the commercial pressures. In a similar way, A Flourishing Scourge makes the effort to have good transitions between the mellow moments and the heavier ones, so that the music can flow, and not sound like a quick salad of riffs in a traffic jam.

Of course, this band can play music fast, slowly or melodically, but that’s not the point. The music does require several listens before it can really make sense to the audience. At first the songs are a landscape of sound waves, riffs and aural segments joined together by time, will and imagination. The sensation that the band seeks is that the listener recognize that it has taken a while for the compositions to form, and gratification for the listener will not be instant, but it does arrive with a few more spins. Is the band trying to separate the wheat from shaft, the casual listener from the ones that will become loyalists? Perhaps. Maybe there is no overall strategy besides just making the music they want and letting the music find the audience.

If listeners give this music the proper time, and are up for whatever new adventures might come around, this band would be a good choice. This is a wonderful start for the band. If this is only the beginning, supporters of the band have every right to be proud, and can look forward to some interesting and unexpected things to happen in the future. The band’s constant contrast of heaviness and melody, prog and extreme metal, beauty and beast, puts them in an advantageous position for the future.

Can you believe that this band is from Snohomish County? It is my understanding that at least some of the members are from the general Everett/Snohomish area. That’s very good news indeed. Let’s have more metal in the Everett/Snohomish/Lake Stevens/ Marysville/Arlington/etc. area.

The band is:

Tye Jones: the grit and the crunch

Josh Keifer: the cannons

Kevin Carbrey: the thunder

Andrew Dennis: the lead crunch

www.facebook.com/aflourishingscourge

www.twitter.com/a_scourge

www.reverbnation.com/aflourishingscourge

for tickets or booking information, please contact aflourishingscourge@gmail.com