“Welcome destruction as destiny.”
Dying Wish are hardly any strangers to knowing what breakneck ass beater core is all about. Despite only a tandem of albums and EPs in their repertoire, Portland’s golden metalcore children have been turning heads since the day Fragments of a Bitter Memory was released in 2021. With an unequivocal hunger to further prove themselves, Dying Wish would subsequently offer a refined thrashing of odes to yesteryear in 2023 with Symptoms of Survival.
A significant amount of time is spent in the modern metalcore space on discourse surrounding the revival scene, and rightly so. Dying Wish, however, do not necessarily embody the ethos of Myspace metalcore in a traditional sense. An unorthodox brass-knuckle punch of hardcore has been omnipresent in their music since the very beginning. This has ultimately left a distinct mark on the underground community with a scar spelling out their name. Seven years in the game and still relatively young, the zenith of Dying Wish’s sonic maturation has been realized with Flesh Stays Together.
Suppose none of Dying Wish’s previous work had truly espoused the fundamental sensibilities of raw, untethered metalcore. In that case, Flesh Stays Together represents an increased favorability for many of the essential aspects we were all accustomed to fifteen to twenty years ago. Foremost amongst these is the productive reliance on melodic sections from track to track. While Flesh Stays Together tends to fluctuate in auditory mass, it nonetheless evokes a more emotionally charged set of melodious elements that were sporadic across their prior projects. “I’ll Know You’re Not Around” and “A Curse Upon Iron” have the de facto Dying Wish nuclear impact, hardcore breakdowns, yet they just as effectively trade blows with clean choruses and slow-burning bridges. This results in maximal buildup and, in turn, presents a scorched-earth aftermath when Flesh Stays Together introduces signature Dying Wish barn burner instrumentals into the fold. It takes both confidence and aptitude in equal measure to evolve your sound this much, rather than piece by piece, and Dying Wish has done so to a remarkable degree.
It’s welcomingly clear that Dying Wish didn’t want to resign themselves to merely adhering to an overly formulaic approach during a quasi-wholesale shift in methodology. Make no mistake; Flesh Stays Together is indisputably their most metalcore record to date, but that does not mean every composition aligns with the same vanilla outline. “Heaven Departs” opens the oscillating floodgates in terms of tempo and structure. From an initial chorus into a beatdown midsection and capping off with a churningly degressive outro, this is one such case where much of Flesh Stays Together is the reflection of Dying Wish’s obvious insistence on challenging themselves wherever possible. Similarly, “Nothing Like You” spends most of its runtime showcasing a solum serenade before eventually igniting into a rush of aggressive chugs and hooks before melding these facets together into its closing moments.
Regarding overcoming adversity, Emma Boster has honed her craft in terms of expansive vocal range. On Flesh Stays Together, we receive her expressive magnum opus. While shades of her vast improvement are colored from front to back on this album, the closing and titular track is where Boster truly shines. Multi-pitch cleans and jarring growls are reverberated in spades. This alone offers an exponentially gratifying force to Flesh Stays Together that was scarce—if anything good was to be somewhat limited—beforehand.
Unsurprisingly, the stringer trio of Sam Reynolds, Pedro Carrillo, and Jon Mackey, along with drummer Jeff Yambra, has further solidified the indelible weight of every audible swing Flesh Stays Together takes at listeners. Those who have previously endured the chainsaw dissection of Dying Wish’s sledgehammer-to-the-dome sound will feel every second of “Revenge In Carnage”, “Surrender Everything”, and “Empty The Chamber” until they’re reduced to nothingness. In totality, Flesh Stays Together is acoustically haunting, soothing, and cathartically hair-raising. At every artistic level, it’s the culmination of a band catching lightning in a bottle.
Perhaps the only facet of this record that will incur some amount of disagreement is the production. Will Putney has given Flesh Stays Together a uniformly chafed helping of engineering that is undoubtedly intentional. Though this is pertinent in augmenting every ounce of Dying Wish’s technical tonnage, some may be divided over the mixing. There is such a thing as too raw. Whether or not Putney managed to tow the line in one direction or the other in this case is entirely dependent on personal taste. That being said, a bettor would probably wager on most enjoying this means of execution.
Most of the time, it takes the longevity of a sustained career to establish a true legacy. Lead by example, create a nuanced partition of inveterate sound, and be really fucking good at it. Dying Wish possess all these qualities and have cemented their rightful place as staple genre pundits. Flesh Stays Together is a fractional distance away from being as perfect as perfect can be. Given the overwhelmingly positive disparity in quality that Dying Wish has cultivated from record to record, whatever follows this could very well be the faultless embodiment of metalcore.
9.5/10
Flesh Stays Together releases on September 26th via SharpTone Records and can be pre-ordered here.