DYING FETUS — Wrong One to Fuck With (review)

DYING FETUS — Wrong One to Fuck With album cover

Album · 2017 · Brutal Death Metal

4/5 · 2017-09-19
siLLy puPPy

Ever since the early days of death metal when Suffocation introduced an unthinkable brutal assault to the adolescent ears of the metal world, such so called brutal death metal bands have been hard pressed to keep their form of sonic assault from becoming one-dimensional in scope. Some bands such as Behemoth kept a large part of their black metal roots, some such as Nile incorporated exotic musical scales and themes to separate themselves from the pack and some such as Maryland’s DYING FETUS chose to keep their old school death metal sound as their template and not only up the brutality but add elements of technical guitar wizardry and slamming deathgrind elements as well. While many brutal death metal bands struggle to find new sources of inspiration, DYING FETUS effortlessly continues to hone their sound well into the 21st century more than a quarter of a century after their formation. On their eighth studio album this band proves that maturity doesn’t necessarily equate a single shred of compromise or stagnation. In fact despite being firmly fixed into the signature sound that the band has been evolving since the beginning, WRONG ONE TO FUCK WITH is one of their most varied and deliberately in your face albums just dripping in attitudinal blood like freshly slaughtered convents of forcefully raped nuns.

The fiery opener “Fixated On Devastation” is ferociously fueled and chomping at the bit to unleash the most headache inducing music possible which perfectly demonstrates the modern DYING FETUS in full fucking glory. Utilizing the neoclassical guitar wankery as introduced by Necrophagist into the death metal world, guitarist and vocalist John Gallagher deftly sets the fretboard on fire with finger breaking face melters that would seem more at home on an Yngwie Malmsteem recording but seamlessly melds them into the chunky down-tuned death metal riffing that trigger the incredible bass plucking skills of Sean Beasley to match his beyond caffeinated march into the sonic battlefields of ararchic distortion disciplined into groove metal oscillations and pummeling frenetic time signature freakouts. Of course, the true star of this show is from the extradorinaiy energetic and beyond human skin abuse of drummer Trey Williams who is the prime mover and shaker who has lifted DYING FETUS into a new level of drum abuse and brutality in this latter phase of their career. His amazingly blast beats, double kicks and drum roll changes at a million miles per second leave me to wonder how many drum sticks and other equipment were sacrificed in the recording process!

While some bands are all about experimentation and evolving their sounds to new levels of progressiveness, DYING FETUS is happy to only subtly change their sound on any given album in effect sticking to what they know best and what they perform with ease, namely some of the most wickedly brutal death metal that the world has to offer. While some DYING FETUS albums leave me leaving a little meh by the time i get to the end of an album 9even the shorter ones), WRONG ONE TO FUCK WITH delivers a plethora of satisfying hook-laden compositions that incorporate the expected frenetic slam riffing, ferocious breakdowns complete with all those pig squeal guitar licks not to mention the neoclassical lightning guitar wizardry guitar solos that are used judiciously and erupt without notice. In addition, Gallagher’s vocals have never sounded more tortured like a sodomized with ice picks Cookie Monster and spews out some of the most vile political disdain the band has ever regurgitated all wrapped up with groove, attitude and in full fucking ferocious monstrosity.

Personally i much prefer the newer releases of DYING FETUS as they take all the band’s history and compile it into a much more satisfying unit not only offering a taste of the old school death metal world from whence they emerged but effortlessly ups the ante not only in the school of skill set and musical maestrohood but engages the most modern production techniques to create a crisp and clean sound without sounding overproduced and sanitized in any way shape or form. WRONG ONE TO FUCK WITH is an excellent brutal death metal album that while clocking in at nearly an hour’s length making it the band’s longest to date never gets fucking boring for one bit. Not to mention it doesn’t resort to any sort of energetic slowdown. This is adrenaline fueled brutal death metal from start to finish. Like all music from this band, it revs me up and makes me wanna abort a thousand fetuses and grind them up into sausage and sell it as sustainably raised happy meat at the farmer’s market, but instead after listening to a whole hour of this i’m simply content to listen to the ringing in my ears after the pummeling punishment that this bloodthirsty and barbarous beast has beset upon my ears.

more than 2 years ago
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UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Yeah listening to Destroy the Opposition always makes me want to jump in the moshpit LOL :-) Nice brutal aggression...it doesn´t get much better than that when it comes to the really brutal types of death metal.

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

This one is great, but you can't beat Destroy the Opposition. That's one of the best death metal albums out there.

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

You're right about Destroy. Killing is one I've still not heard. Just love the extra level of musianship and production on this

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

This one is great, but IMO nothing beats Killing on Adrenaline and Destroy the Opposition.

siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Thanks :) I've been listening to other albums just to form some sort of comparison and i really like this one a smidge above the others (am missing a couple though)