‘I’ve skinned both my knees praying for sleep, I’ve bled years off my life to earn my keep, I’ve worn my fingers down, chewed off my tongue, Seen the crack in the sky, shouted out my lungs’ (Dying In A Dream)

Dying In A Dream is Wet Specimens follow-up to their 2023 first full-length, Over Pale Bodies.  By drawing on Japanese hardcore and death rock influences in equal measure, the Albany band succeed in imbuing their harsh, rhythmic sound with both a surging intensity and a notable aura of gothic drama.  The raw, semi-shouted vocals inject a desperate, urgent energy throughout as the bleakly allusive lyrics explore a relentlessly dehumanising world hurtling inexorably towards its own destruction.

The slow burn escalation of the opening title track is built around a remorseless, menacing riff, ominous spoken interludes, and martial anarcho-punk rhythms, before sweeping into the darkly melodic, feverishly unsettling Curtain Call, haunting synths fuelling the chorus.  The flipside kicks off with the more stripped back galloping d-beat of Where Light Refracts, before the howling solos of Tomb Sentinel ignite a crushing finale.