Introducing: Final Affliction

Belgian duo Final Affliction take a wide-open approach to creating music that’s free of genre labels and restrictions. That said, the duo aims to push the boundaries of modern metal with a sound that plays heavily on technical complexity and emotion and they describe as “progressive, aggressive and romantic.”

Despite both being seasoned musicians from the Belgian underground scene, Jan Geenen and Sten Veiths only met each other at a gig a couple of years ago. Sten was playing a show with his band Breakfast At Midnight and Jan instantly recognised the potential of them working together.

On the sound they’ve crafted since, they told us: “It’s heavy, but it’s not extreme; it’s beautiful melancholic melodies telling you the most terrible things with an aggressive coat. Final Affliction doesn’t have a genre, there are no restrictions. If we want to create a track with jazz influences, we will do it, for example.”

Our latest taste of this is Final Affliction’s third single Pray-Obey, which was released last week. It opens up with moody guitars and whispery vocals before a big scream ushers in heavier guitars and rolling drums. It drops into an atmospheric verse of echoey vocals supported by a thick bassline and distant guitars, before exploding into a huge chorus of the lines “Now pray and obey, Worship and pay, Nothing remains, Now pray and obey, Burn and decay, Now pray and obey, Worship and pay, Nothing remains, Now pray and obey until we’re whole again” supported by a booming riff.

A slightly unsettling verse follows, ending on a big scream and vicious stabbing guitars with backing synths adding to the intensity. Heavy vocals feed into another chorus, which flows into another verse of echoey vocals that ends on a big scream. The intensity etches up a level as it drives into vicious vocals and a stabbing riff under cries of “Pray, Obey” then huge stabbing guitars, which set up a big atmospheric ending.

On the track, they told us: “It’s only been two days, but we are sure it will stir up things. We are not against people that believe, but we are against the corruption that sometimes occurs within religious groups.” Check it out here:

That follows on from the equally intense Burn The Periphery, which you can check out in the video below, and their excellent debut single Sin/Salvation.

The Final Affliction sound has been influenced by the duo’s love for metal and progressive leaders. Sten is big into Tool, Gojira and Architects while Jan leans towards the likes of Type O’Negative, Dool (a Dutch five-piece) and Meshuggah.

And on what inspires them to write music, the band told us: “Everything that we experience, we write about. Topics in life that put people in boxes, basically. It’s an escape from life, we tend to write about topics such as corruption or manipulation. We want to offer an escape for people and also say, you are not alone.”

We absolutely love the intensity and diversity of the Final Affliction sound and there’s plenty more to come from them. Jan and Sten are looking to form a full band, and are actively searching for the right drummer, another guitarist and a bassist. They’ll be releasing the video for Pray-Obey on Thursday (17 April), which they tell us re-creates The Last Supper, and their fourth single in June, again with their current producer Martin Furia, who’s worked with the likes of Destruction, Bark and Nervosa. And they added: “We keep on evolving, this is just the preparation for the storm yet to come!”

You can follow Final Affliction on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and check out their music on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.