The long silence is over — and the aftermath is louder than ever.
US electro-industrial force Flesh Field have returned with On Enmity, released February 20th through Metropolis Records. It’s not a nostalgia trip. It’s not a victory lap. It’s a reckoning.
“This record contains the most personal material that I have ever written,” says founder Ian Ross. “It documents the aftermath of trauma; the dissection of damage and the endurance that follows when survival becomes an involuntary act of defiance in and of itself. It’s not about recovery. It’s about adaptation to ruin.”
That statement alone sets the tone. On Enmity doesn’t offer comfort. It offers confrontation.
Trauma, Endurance, and Adaptation to Ruin
Where many artists frame pain as a stepping stone toward healing, Ross rejects the narrative of redemption. On Enmity lives in the wreckage. It studies the fracture lines. It asks what survival looks like when the world doesn’t reset — when the only option left is to endure.
The album was preceded by the single “Supplication,” a track Ross described as exploring “the ache of longing for what is absent and will never return.” It’s a theme that pulses throughout the record — absence, grief, and the cold clarity that follows devastation.
Critics quickly took notice.
I DIE: YOU DIE praised the single’s force and urgency:
“It’s orchestral, it’s hard, it has sharp lyrics and vocals, and a lot of vitriol baked into its commentary on the contemporary American psyche. Kind of recalls ‘Year Zero’ era Nine Inch Nails — not a bad thing in the slightest.”
EVOL RADIO called it:
“Stark and emotionally devastating… less about healing, more about learning how to exist inside the wreckage left behind.”
Meanwhile, PEEK-A-BOO highlighted its precision:
“Balances mechanical rhythms with brooding atmospherics, crafting a sonic environment that is bleak yet compelling. Executed with seasoned precision.”
Those descriptors extend naturally into On Enmity as a whole — orchestral weight colliding with mechanical aggression, vitriol layered over symphonic architecture.
From Dormancy to Defiance
Flesh Field began in 1996, founded by Ian Ross in Columbus, Ohio. The 1999 debut Viral Extinction introduced a meticulously programmed, symphonic-infused brand of electro-industrial that immediately distinguished the project. Follow-up album Belief Control (2001) deepened that sonic identity, blending intricate sequencing with cinematic intensity.
By 2004’s Strain, released in the US via Metropolis Records, Flesh Field had evolved into a massive, anthemic machine — adding acoustic and electronic percussion, guitars, and choral textures to create a towering soundscape that remains a landmark of the genre.
And then… silence.
For nearly two decades, Flesh Field remained dormant. Yet the music endured, finding its way into films like The Mill, television series such as True Blood, and video games including Project Gotham Racing. The absence only sharpened the mythos.
In 2023, Ross reignited the project with Voice of the Echo Chamber, a concept album dissecting political radicalization and violence across ten thematic stages. The companion Voice of Reason EP followed in 2024. Remastered reissues of Viral Extinction and Belief Control arrived in 2025 — bridging past and present.
Now, On Enmity stands as the next evolution.
A Sound Built from the Ashes
If earlier Flesh Field records documented ideological corrosion and systemic collapse, On Enmity feels inward — psychological, intimate, unflinching. The orchestration remains grand, the programming razor-sharp, but the emotional core is stripped raw.
This is electro-industrial forged in aftermath.
Not triumph.
Not healing.
Adaptation.
And in a world that increasingly feels fractured beyond repair, that defiant endurance may be the most radical act of all.
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