Metal
Francesco Paoli, the singer of Fleshgod Apocalypse, has had surgery on his left hand. A couple of weeks ago surgeons took tissue from his hip and transplanted it into the empty areas of the hand; he posted the news on Instagram with photographs of the result.
The accident dates from 21 August 2021: climbing in the Gran Sasso massif in Abruzzo, he fell and was hospitalised with multiple fractures. His ulnar nerve was left with an eight-centimetre interruption, and with it he lost sensation and almost all the muscle that lies between the bones of the hand.
“That is gonna stay; I accept it and worked out exotic solutions (like rubber bands) to keep doing what I love the most, playing,” he writes. “But my hand was almost skeletal and we had to do something to protect the structures that were still working in there, like bones, ligaments, veins, tendons.” Of the result he says: “It looks and feels much better!”
Paoli warns he is not done yet and that next year he will need another touch-up operation, but that it is already accounted for in the band’s schedule so that no show has to be cancelled. It is the third part of his body to be rebuilt: his arm and his foot came first.
Fleshgod Apocalypse’s last record is “Opera”, released on 23 August 2024 through Nuclear Blast. It was written out of that accident.
Text by Roger Estivill