Review by Saxy S for Dying Wish - Flesh Stays Together (2025)

Dying Wish are a Portland based metalcore band who really surprised a couple of years ago with Symptoms of Survival with its balanced intensity. Two years later, the band is back with their third studio album and I can't help but feel like we've downgraded here. 

And for starters, I think we have to look at the individual song structures found within Flesh Stays Together. This album appears to be broken up into three distinct types of songs. The first is the full frontal assault of hardcore punk fun on "A Curse Upon Iron" and " Surrender Everything". The second is the buildup song; it starts with a clean guitar tone and Emma's softer singing timbre, while evolving over time into something that feels like a real payoff like on "Nothing Like You" or the title track. And then everything else falls into some kind of Spiritbox sounding status quo 2020s metalcore album. Taking influence from Spiritbox might not be a deterrent in theory, but the execution feels lacking in any sense of growth from it.

Production is also taking a minor downgrade from Symptoms of Survival. For starters, Emma's harsh screams sound a lot less focused than the previous record; a lot of her syllables start to blend together and it causes the rest of album to lose its punch. The opening track "I Don't Belong Anywhere" sets the album off on the wrong foot by having Emma scream with spotty execution. The instrumentals are mostly good; the bass does have a strong presence throughout the record especially during the albums choruses and buildup tracks like "Heaven Departs". But on others, Dying Wish like to implement the tritone dissonant chord in the chugging guitars during the breakdown and for some reason, the bass just kind of disappears? The only other egregious production error was on the heavy track "Revenge In Carnage" where the instrumentals re-enter after a full stop and the mix cannot handle all of the additional noise all at once.

I do not dislike Flesh Stays Together by Dying Wish, however something about it just feels off to me. It feels like the band needed to cave into some arbitrary heaviness code in their contract and as a result, lost some of their identity as a metalcore band in the process. Groups with female vocalists will inevitably be compared to the likes of Spiritbox in the current metalcore climate, but Dying Wish were never trying to be Spiritbox. But with Flesh Stays Together, they might just be.

Best Songs: A Curse Upon Iron, Nothing Like You, Empty the Chamber, Flesh Stays Together