Band:	Dying Fetus
Album:	Wrong One To Fuck With
Style:	Brutal death metal, Technical death metal
Release date:	June 2017

01. Fixated On Devastation
02. Panic Amongst The Herd
03. Die With Integrity
04. Reveling In The Abyss
05. Seething With Disdain
06. Ideological Subjugation
07. Weaken The Structure
08. Fallacy
09. Unmitigated Detestation
10. Wrong One To Fuck With
11. Induce Terror [bonus]

Dying never felt more alive.

You have to hand it to Maryland's Dying Fetus; they are not a band to mince words, and to that effect go for the jugular with their 8th album. titled Wrong One To Fuck With, an uncompromising and crushing slab of technical death metal that continues to walk along the razor's edge of brutality and technicality while maintaining a high level of song quality.

Coming off of Reign Supreme, I wouldn't have been too surprised had the album that became Wrong One To Fuck With been a step down, owing to the quality of the preceding album making any follow up a hard ask but wow; Dying Fetus avoid that pitfall here. Many people rush right into the question of "but is it better than Reign Supreme?" but that overlooks the album somewhat, treating it as the little brother rather than listening to it on its own merits.

Incorporating slightly more slam riffs and with more attention paid to the quality/technicality of the riffage, The Wrong One To Fuck With is one of the heaviest albums from the band in years, with tracks like "Die With Integrity" slightly further along the scale towards heaviness than it is to catchiness, while never that far away for it to be a noticeable shift in focus. Speaking of renewed focus, perhaps the events of the preceding six years lit a fire for the band because the knives are sharpened when it comes to lyrical content, with tracks like "Ideological Subjugation", "Unmitigated Detestation" and "Panic Amongst The Herd" written and played with such vehemence and conviction that it makes many a protest song from recent years sound like a love poem.

The band are on fine form, balancing power and technicality with apparent ease, which results in some of the strongest songs the band have produced to date. "Fixated On Devastation", "Ideological Subjugation" and "Seething In Distain" are some of the best examples of mixing death metal and technicality without either having to be compromised for the sake of the other, ensuring each compliments the other. While many bands in the genre often achieve this by having death metal tracks with passages of technical playing, Dying Fetus meld both together, which separates them from many other bands in the genre (though yes they do reserve some passages for technical parts).

There are elements that could be improved on this album, though to the credit of the band it is more to do with the sonics of the album as opposed to their playing. The guitars do lack an element of power to them; while they are coherent, at times they feel like they could use an extra bit of oomph to allow them to jump forward and get right in your face and melt your skin off. The bass is again mostly a passenger except in passages; given the quality of Beasley's playing, he could easily make the most of a more upfront role than being stuck behind Gallagher and Williams. These are small tweaks to the production, but I feel their effect on the album would lead to a vastly greater listening experience; it is still good as it is, but you get that nagging thought in your head that it could be better.

To be coming nearing your thirtieth year and producing some of the highest quality work of your career is an achievement many bands don't make, Dying Fetus make themselves an exception to this with quality output like Wrong One To Fuck With. It would take a brave person to bet against the band not being able to carry this over into their next album (hopefully not after as long a wait as we experienced here) and deliver more high quality death metal.