Review by Lumina on January 16, 2026.

Judging by the title, you can already guess my opinion on this album. That aside, Dying Wish has been a fairly recent discovery for me, but their previous album, Symptoms Of Survival, was an amazing piece of melodic metalcore. So, what exactly changed for this record to receive my second-ever negative review?

The short version, beatdown with cleans. If you want more details, keep reading. Firstly, remember the aforementioned melodic aspect? Yeah, that's basically almost completely gone for whatever reason. Secondly, an ungodly amount of cleans that are way too fucking loud. Thirdly, what the fuck is this mix? Fourthly, awful pacing. Now, this all may be a bit too much at once, so let me go a little more in-depth.

For the relatively short time that I knew this band, they were always like melodic metalcore Lilith's Demise for me. So the complete lack of any melodeath/melodic metal/deathcore riffs really just sucks. The cleans on their own are actually quite good, but my god, what were they thinking songwriting-wise with them? I lost track of the number of times a song on this album started with clean vocals and guitar, but it was more than an album from a band like this should realistically have. That's made even worse by the mix, because again, what the fuck were the people who mixed this thinking? The vocals are like a good 20-50% louder than everything else at times. The guitars are not exempt from this tomfoolery, though, because those could most definitely sit higher in the mix. Would that have helped with the lackluster amount of melodeath riffs? I don't know. Would it have spared my ears from getting blasted with cleans that are way too loud, probably. Arguably, the worst offender of all, though, is the pacing. I don't know what was smoked to have this be the final result, but my fucking God. I suppose the latter half of the record is better, but still not something I will return to anytime soon.

In conclusion, a big unmemorable disappointment that kind of just pisses me off. If this had been an album from a new band, it would not have been nearly as disappointing, but given Dying Wish's track record, this is just sad.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10