ALBUM REVIEW: Symptoms Of Survival – Dying Wish

It would be impossible to talk about the current era of throwback metalcore without saying a lot of nice things about Fragments Of A Bitter Memory. Quite possibly the finest example of it in recent memory – with all due respect to the strong competition provided by the likes of RENOUNCED and FOREIGN HANDS and definitely at least the debut LP from SEEYOUSPACECOWBOY – it set a lofty bar for Portland bruisers DYING WISH on their first full-length outing, one which they now make every effort to surpass on their sophomore album Symptoms Of Survival. 

If you’ve heard any of the singles you should be at least half aware that Symptoms Of Survival evolves in a somewhat expected direction, i.e. there are more clean vocals. These already informed some of the highlights on Fragments, but frontwoman Emma Boster has clearly grown more confident in this area in the intervening years. Invariably, these raise the emotional stakes of the record, their beauty and delicacy standing in stark contrast to the savagery at the band’s core. Of those singles, Lost In The Fall stands especially tall as it brings things to a grand and dynamic close that even channels something of the theatrical power of the mighty Howard Jones, but of the album cuts it’s sixth track Paved In Sorrow that takes it furthest of all in the form of a showstopping metalcore ballad that skips the harsh vocals almost entirely.

To be clear though: Symptoms Of Survival is by no means a watering down of the band’s sound in pursuit of things like accessibility or airplay. It is more varied – more nuanced even – but again even the singles have demonstrated that it will still absolutely take your head off given half the chance. Fourth track Prey For Me ends up as low and slow and ugly as something THE ACACIA STRAIN might do for example, while Tongues Of Lead and Kiss Of Judas reel off volleys of tight and focused violence one after the other – each barely clearing the two-minute mark and placed right after the relative respite of the aforementioned Paved In Sorrow as if to prove a point.

As she always has, Boster does steal the show a bit; her charisma and versatility as a vocalist is one of the band’s biggest draws and she is a compelling vessel for the album’s exploration of “the complexity of human suffering in all forms”. One moment intensely vulnerable, another seething with rage, emotion pours through the entirety of Symptoms Of Survival, but perhaps nowhere more-so than in Path To Your Grave – another of the singles – which repurposes the unflinching “I would bury you if I could” line from the title track of the last record as Boster finds greater acceptance of the trauma she suffered at the hands of her stepfather. The perspective may have changed, but the impact is no less devastating.

And perhaps that’s a fitting summation of Symptoms Of Survival as a whole really. It shows a level of growth one would hope of any band going from their debut to their second album, but without losing any of that which made them so captivating in the first place. Hopefully no-one is under the illusion that DYING WISH are completely changing the game here but they are arguably playing it better than anyone else and now they’ve got two genuinely fantastic records under their belt it is not hard to envisage a future in which they are held in the same high regard as that which is typically reserved for those bands who perfected all this in the 00s – if indeed they aren’t there already.

Rating: 8/10

Symptoms Of Survival is set for release on November 3rd via SharpTone Records.

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