Dying Fetus - Wrong One to Fuck With

Quite a few of my write-ups about death metal albums lately have been ending up rather short as a result of my feeling like I don’t really have a lot to say that’s unique to my perspective of them, with bands like Suffocation, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Rings of Saturn coming out with music just about anyone would predict them to make. For some bands whose continuous knack for finding something great to pull out of their niche in death metal, the consistency is favorable and appreciated, and their catalogs usually open up to a more diverse array of sound than is able to be seen upon initial listens. For others, keeping put in the same place musically comes off almost cowardly, or just unexciting as they continue to add little of their own flair to the genre, stagnating and coasting off the momentum of a surge of interest in their style. Dying Fetus has found themselves over their career in both of these situations in my opinion, this time luckily in the former as they deliver a longer but more consistently crushing barrage of technical death metal on Wrong One to Fuck With than they have in quite some time. This write-up is probably going to be short too because this album just feels like Dying Fetus condensing their most potent types of ideas that appeared across previous albums (not like self-plagiarism though), Reign Supreme especially. Consequently, anything to enjoy about Dying Fetus is present here and has already been discussed: the powerful guttural vocals, the dizzying guitar pull-offs and sweep-picking, the sprint-speed blast beat drumming, the slow-fast dynamics across the songs, it’s all there in some of the most masterful forms Dying Fetus has put to record. That’s really all I have to say about it; it’s predictable, but it’s pummeling and exactly what anyone with high expectations can reasonably ask for from Dying Fetus.

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