ALBUM REVIEW: Flesh Stays Together – Dying Wish

September 27, 2025 Amber Brooks

DYING WISH are immortalised with their fatal third record Flesh Stays Together. As it stands, it is safe to say that this is the album that will define the Portland metalcore quintet – asphyxiated with the chilling reminder that horror reveals the beauty in the band’s complex sound.

With the release of 2023’s Symptoms Of Survival, there was something chaotic lurking in the depths of the record. As one of the first opportunities to let Emma Boster’s silken vocals carve through the tracks like a hot knife through butter, it allowed the record to breathe through its eerie points of reflection. We now could feel the bleakness in the lyrics and those moments to wallow only intensified those intense moments of noise.

The band knew it was a risk, but little did they know it was also going to be one hell of a journey, with its damning destination being Flesh Stays Together. Here DYING WISH are still brutal, with sun-swallowing intensity. The record is compacted with thirty-five minutes of explosions, gnarly guitar tones and face-melting screams. It’s still the band’s signature sound, pure with their incredible accuracy to cherrypick the best elements of the extreme and make incredibly abrasive music.

When it veers off the dark and unapologetic path, the record is haunting. In some ways, Flesh Stays Together is a reminder of what ITHACA could have been, shining with that dazzling ability to allure and control the narrative in moments of heavy and calm. Siren like in tracks like Nothing Like You and Moments I Regret feeds off of that ethereality that SPIRITBOX brings with Eternal Blue and Tsunami Sea.

Flesh Stays Together is a landmark in creating eerie metalcore, another jewel in the crown of the genre’s relatively recent ability to lean into horror tropes, championed by grotesque atmosphere, vile breakdowns and placing the listener in extreme moments of sonic danger. If you could call it a “trend”, then it is one of the most exciting things the genre has to offer currently. The rugged intensity of small town Louisville is made exceedingly brutal with KNOCKED LOOSE’s recent records, with that overbearing fuzz lingering in DYING WISH’s new sound. Its formidable foundations create that Amity Horror House of unescapable pain. In some ways, this is one of the best things the band brought in with the addition of producer Will Putney.

There is an overwhelming unease listening to the record. The same lingering distress found in 156/SILENCE’s People Watching – strengthened not through throwing everything the band can put on a sonic canvas, but taking the time to find solace in the moments of quiet. This is DYING WISH’s greatest strength. If Flesh Stays Together was a movie – and visually this is what the band have played in to – it would be independent, set in a small town and gory. There is an unspeakable truth in how the record is delivered and the victim is always considered.

Above it all, its worth noting how DYING WISH feels polished. It’s a marker of an incredible metal band on the rise and the record knows it. Flesh Stays Together has some great singles – namely I’ll Know You’re Not Around and Revenge In Carnage, that electrify their intense live sets. Against the backdrop of the rest of the album. It seems to ooze with confidence. As with most horror, it’s a projection of entirely true feelings about the wider world and in that way it feels so fresh and contemporary.

The trajectory of the record seems to only get more impressive with time, with Heaven Departs being a lynchpin into their own final scene. The band turn to return to the solace with eponymous track Flesh Stays Together. Empowering and all encompassing. It is a behemoth and a show stealer. We fear that when it comes to DYING WISH, the best is yet to come.

Rating: 9/10