PeelingFlesh performing during the I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me Tour at the HEB Center in Cedar Park, Texas on October 5, 2025, with Damonteal Harris, Jason Parrish, Mychal Soto, and Joe Pelletier. (Photo: Ralph Arvesen)
PeelingFlesh is not a band that asks for attention; they demand it with sonic violence. Hailing from Oklahoma, this crushing unit has rapidly established itself as the new standard bearer for slamming brutal death metal, a genre built on groove, weight, and pure percussive impact. Their music is deliberately devoid of the soaring melodies and technical flourishes found in other metal subgenres. Instead, PeelingFlesh specializes in the slam, those chunky, lurching, low-end guitar riffs that are engineered not for headbanging, but for seismic internal destruction. It is music created to be the soundtrack to the most chaotic mosh pits imaginable, emphasizing rhythm and visceral feeling over all else.
The band’s identity is anchored in an aesthetic of raw, unfiltered aggression, a sound that feels less polished and more like a heavy object dragged across asphalt. Vocalist Kevin Pone is a force of nature, utilizing a vocal style that sits deep in the guttural range, often sounding more like an engine struggling to start or a monstrous gurgle than a human voice. This commitment to the subhuman is coupled with a groove oriented rhythm section that locks into punishing, repetitive patterns. They create a musical atmosphere that is suffocatingly heavy, yet strangely danceable in the most violent sense of the word. PeelingFlesh represents the uncompromised, fundamental core of brutality in modern extreme music.
The current tour is a definitive proof that their studio terror translates flawlessly to the live arena, often amplified by the sheer, unbridled chaos of the crowd. Walking into the venue for a PeelingFlesh show feels less like attending a concert and more like bracing for a sonic demolition. From the moment the first crushing breakdown hits, the band establishes an unrelenting pace. There is no pretense, no excessive light show, just four musicians delivering a monolithic, heavy wall of sound that physically rattles the chest cavity.
What makes this tour essential viewing is the palpable interaction between the band and their devotees. The rhythm section is unbelievably tight; the drummer is an absolute anchor, holding down the sporadic, often intentionally staggered beats that characterize slam music, while the guitarists focus purely on maximizing the impact of every single chord chug. When the band drops into one of their signature, agonizingly slow breakdowns, the pit erupts in cyclonic violence, a chaotic celebration of pure catharsis.
Kevin Pone is a captivating presence, spending as much time engaging the front row as he does delivering his guttural incantations. He acts as the conductor for the crowd's energy, pushing the intensity to breaking point and ensuring that the experience is participatory, not passive. The band’s setlist wisely focuses on their most rhythmically devastating tracks, keeping the momentum high and the pressure constant. For fans who believe metal should be painful, heavy, and focused on maximum groove, the current PeelingFlesh tour is a vital experience, solidifying their status as masters of the modern slam genre.
Setlist for the show at the HEB Center
- Bathtub Execution
- Matar a palos
- Shoot 2 Kill
- Perc 3000
- Holdin'
- Tear The Club Up
- Midnight
- Flesh Cathedral
- DVPB
- F.F.W.A.S
PeelingFlesh shared the stage with Lorna Shore, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Shadow of Intent at the HEB Center. They continue across the United States and Europe with the last stop at the Rock Café in Prague, Czech Republic on December 7, 2025.
PeelingFlesh
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