There’s something unnerving about Dying Fetus. While Cannibal Corpse may deal in a more extreme form of horror, their imagery is cartoonish, while Dying Fetus feel far more likely to show up your house bearing instruments of torture. That lingering sense of threat is also evident in the band’s art, which veers closer to Brujeria’s severed-head horror, than a Wes Benscoter piece. Which brings us to Make Them Beg For Death, the band’s ninth full-length offering, and their seventh consecutive release on death metal haven Relapse. A blistering album, tracked by Steve Wright and mixed/mastered with deft precision by Mark Lewis, it offers ten remorseless tracks of unhinged death metal, occasionally augmented with elements of tech and grind.
The album opens with Enlighten Through Agony and a killer riff from John Gallagher. With drummer Trey Williams battering the listener into a bloodied pulp, John and Sean trade vocals over this mechanistic backdrop, and we’re thrown into the heart of some grimy exploitation flick where some unseen protagonist pays the price for the scorn with which they treat others. Nor does the brilliant Compulsion For Cruelty offer any respite. Like a relentless and extended torture scene, the track is drawn out, offering glimpses of neither hope nor redemption, as the band deploy a mid-paced chug that simply flattens everything in its path. However, that’s not to say it’s one-note death metal. While the track primarily languishes in a brutal mid-tempo groove, John’s occasional tech flourishes serve to keep the track memorable. In contrast, the stair-stepping riff of Feast Of Ashes throws awkward time signatures and dizzying guitar work into the mix, even while the vocals are delivered with near inhuman levels of bile. However, lest things get too technical, the band then proceed to torment the listener with the harrowing Throw Them In The Van, a sub-two-minute whirlwind assault on the senses that is over before the full extent of the injuries received are even apparent. It is these two tracks that most effectively summarise the nature of Dying Fetus’ appeal – their ferocious technical ability, offset by a malevolent desire to simply obliterate the listener – and they are both masterclasses in extremity, albeit at different ends of the spectrum. The first half concludes with the aptly-titled Unbridled Fury, a similarly frantic outpouring, that settles into a gleaming groove as it progresses.
An album highlight, When The Trend Ends mixes churning groove, bowel-scraping bass, and guttural vocals to menacing effect. With a sudden rhythmic shift that only ups the ante, it’s a track that pretty much epitomises death metal’s underpinning technicality, and it leaves the listener somewhat breathless at its conclusion. It’s followed by the more technical Undulating Carnage, a track that sees the band take great delight in shifting the ground under the listeners’ feet, with Trey demonstrating remarkable fluidity behind the kit. Raised In Victory, Razed In Defeat has a more elastic groove, Sean Beasley’s bass thundering through the mix, as the double kick assault beats out a tattoo on your rib cage. Played relatively straight, Hero’s Grave places the emphasis on the vocals which, delivered with rhythmic precision, are essentially an instrument in their own right. This violent little bastard concludes with the full-tilt rage of Subterfuge. Veering between caustic thrash and gruelling mid-tempo death metal, it’s a satisfyingly vicious conclusion to an album that never once lets the listener off the hook.
Over the course of an impressively consistent career, Dying Fetus have elevated extremity to an art form and, like the grim exploitation films that inform their lyrics and their artwork, they specialise in delivering a sonic experience that is both resolutely bleak and yet adrenaline-charged. With the band deftly mixing their immense technical skill with a fan’s love of creating groove-laden death metal, Dying Fetus are true masters of the genre, just don’t bump into them down a dark alley, for goodness’ sake. 9/10
