Review by Adam M on December 14, 2015.

Dystophy performs an oddly tuned form of death metal that provides dissonance to a large extent. This is a form of death metal that hasn’t been investigated that much and is thus a nice breath of fresh air for the death metal genre. In fact I believe that it is this band’s desire to explore the weirder sides of death metal that makes this album one hop previous material.

Despite focusing on the left-field side of things, the music remains focused and driven. It is sometimes brutal, but always maintains an aggressive approach. However, this is somewhat brought into different territories by the very unusual style of the outfit. The use of the dissonance in the guitar makes for a wired death metal experience. Still, there are influences from the likes of standards like Morbid Angel and others to be found within the riffs of the outfit. Thus, there is a backbone to the music, though it verges in stranger directions. That leads to this album’s biggest problem. It sometimes gets too odd for its own good and loses the listener’s interest in the process. Also, the catchiness of the music is affected by the off kilter approach to the band and the album forgoes repeated listens. What this leads to is a solid death metal album that is surpassed by greater entries in the genre. It gets overshadowed by the likes of Rivers of Nihil and Sulphur Aeon easily from this year.

Still, I do believe this album is a small improvement over The Chains of Hyprocrisy even if only by a small amount. Yet, it seems to be stuck in the same position of being overtaken by superior metal releases in a similar manner to that album. With good, yet unspectacular riffs and drumming, this album gets a mild recommendation and nothing more. Wretched Host is a fairly solid death metal album.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10