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Wet Specimens return on Dying in a Dream with four new songs for their third EP of trudging and frantic hardcore punk with haunting deathrock undertones.
"That phrase might conjure up some sort of try-hard mallpunk imagery, but think about it more like, you're hanging out with some dudes with leather jackets, drinking a cold beer, and someone asks if you want to go see a dead body in the abandoned asylum on the other side of town"- Javier Vanhuss
Our take: Dying in a Dream is the latest dispatch from this Albany, New York band who has been very active, releasing a spate of material over the past several years. I haven’t checked in with their recordings in a while, but Dying in a Dream caught my ear when I checked it out, with a sound that’s undeniably hardcore punk, but doesn’t sound like anyone else I can think of. The first track, “Dying in a Dream,” is built around this tense, skittering drumbeat that has a tension I associate with anarcho-punk, but the harsher textures also make me think of S.H.I.T., another master of building tension. The next track, “Curtain Call,” is another slow burn, with the addition of horror movie synth helping to evoke the feeling of wandering alone in some creepy-ass woods. Then the two tracks on the b-side turn the focus to charging d-beat, but keeping the progressive tinge you hear on the a-side and climaxing with the stretched-out mid-tempo part that ends the record. Dying in a Dream is heavy, raw, and aggressive just like you want DIY hardcore to be, but Wet Specimens push way past the established formulas that bog down so many other groups.