### Dying Fetus: Reign supreme

#### 13/07/12 || Habakuk

Weedly-weedly-weedly-WEEDLY-weeeooo!! x4 – that’s how this album starts, and it’s how any proper review of it should start as well. Eight wasted seconds, but something about that part just really enticed the Fetus – why else would the insert that exact same weedly-weedly-weedly-WEEDLY-weeeooo!! sweep time and time again? It’s the only gripe I have with them, really. They are a band that really don’t need no introduction anymore, and their 2012 opus humbly entitled “Reign supreme” brings out everything we know and love about them. Slamming breaks a-plenty, straightforward pummeling, the right amount of blastbeats and heaviness galore – but also weedly-weedly-weedly-WEEDLY-weeeooo!!

Show of hands: is anyone interested in the great inventive guitar technicalities that the Fetus sport? Nobody? Wow, that’s no surprise at all. Fuck man, the band bring out some of the best riffing I’ve heard from their camp in quite a while, and both halves of the dual vocals avoid the froggy pit of awkwardness from the past as well, but they seriously couldn’t get rid of the fucken weedly-weedly-weedly-WEEDLY-weeeooo!!? Does that get annoying to read yet? Weedly-weedly-weedly-WEEDLY-weeeooo!!?

Good. I think by this part of the review you got a feel of this album. Most of it is pretty awesome (heh), but there are these annoying parts that just need cutting as they hardly serve the songwriting. They barely ever really have, but by now it’s becoming really, really dull with the Marylanders. At least they use them not too prominently anymore, but I still get the feeling they absolutely want their band pic next to “guitar wankery” in Merriam-Webster’s. Now don’t get my gentleman’s rant the wrong way: Fans of the band will enjoy this album without any distractions, and it sure as hell is no bad place to start if you’ve never heard Dying Fetus before.

The thing that bothers me is the complete lack of necessity of all this: Being at the height of their game with “Reign supreme”, the band definitely have enough trademarks to not have to rely on that kind of signature annoyance. Their production is heavy, they have this slightly processed, but still pretty awesome tightness to them, they do have other, genuinely good lead work, they do have the songwriting to make you go through an album without “skip”-urges (the riffs, the riffs!) and last but not least they slam the shit out of most of their competition. However, at times you just want to grab Gallagher’s guitar and shove it down his throat.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Relapse Records
- Website: Dying Fetus Bandcamp
- Band
- John Gallagher: vocals, guitars
- Sean Beasley: bass, vocals
- Trey Williams: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Invert he idols
- 02. Subjected to a beating
- 03. Second skin
- 04. From womb to waste
- 05. Dissidence
- 06. In the trenches
- 07. Devout atrocity
- 08. Revisionist past
- 09. The blood of power