When we spoke to Dying Wish vocalist Emma Boster last year about her band's debut album, she promised arena-sized metalcore riffs, awesome breakdowns and "ass-beater choruses." Now, Boster and her Portland-based bandmates have formally announced that the highly-anticipated record, Fragments of a Bitter Memory, is set to arrive later this fall, and its title-track lead single lives up to the hype.
Since their 2018 demo, Dying Wish have specialized in a crushing form of metalcore that throws back to NWOAHM bands like Bleeding Through and Killswitch Engage while also maintaining the snarling edge of contemporary hardcore. "Fragments of a Bitter Memory" takes the approach next level, while also treading seriously grueling personal ground.
"'Fragments' starts by taking the listener back to my first memory," Boster said of the song's devastating lyrics. "I was five years old and I was the flower girl at my mother's wedding. My biological father wasn't in my life and the man she was marrying took a vow to fill that void."
She continued, "Over the next decade I watched that same man who I had learned to call my father become a violent alcoholic. By the time I was a young teen I was being verbally and physically abused by him almost daily. I was living in constant fear."
"[The line], 'Seasons of life forever change, healing the fragments you still control,' refers to my constant struggle of healing from this trauma in my adulthood," Boster added. "The video ends with her stabbing him over the lyrics, 'I would bury you if I could,' because even after therapy and a decade of healing, violent revenge seems like the easiest and most satisfying way to cope."
Fragments of a Bitter Memory is due out October 1st via SharpTone Records.
Fragments of a Bitter Memory track listing:
"Cowards Feed, Cowards Bleed"
"Hollowed by Affliction"
"Innate Thirst"
"Severing the Senses"
"Fragments of a Bitter Memory"
"Cold Hearts in Bloom"
"Until Mourning Comes"
"Now You'll Rot"
"Blood Laced Misery"
"Enemies in Red"
"Drowning in the Silent Black"
