Wretched Decay Review
Wretched
Decay
Metal Blade Records
2025
There’s nothing clean about “Decay”. It’s a festering wound of an album, equal parts Death, Thrash, and existential rot. Wretched sound like they’ve crawled out of the grave just to prove they never died in the first place. It’s violent, yes, but it’s the kind of violence that comes from the darkest corners of the mind and heart.
Wretched have always had a knack for balancing precision with punishment, but Decay feels meaner, less polished, and more human than the band’s previous releases. The guitars hit with jagged intent, riffs coil and strike like serpents, while the drums carry the weight of a building collapsing. You can hear the sweat, the grind, the desperation in the songs on this album. Vocally, this album ranges between tortured screams to guttural growls.
Thematically, it fits the title perfectly. The songs feel suffocated by time and regret, suffocating, decaying, but somehow defiant. There’s this overwhelming sense of futility in the air, like the band’s dragging the world’s carcass behind them just to show how far gone it all is. And yet, buried inside that rot is a twisted kind of hope. Maybe not redemption, but the will to keep clawing forward even as everything falls apart.
After this album is over, you feel drained, hollowed, and strangely satisfied. Wretched didn’t just make another technical death record, they made something that hurts. Honestly, it feels less like Tech Death and more like Sludge in several spots. Maybe that was the thought process, whatever the reasoning, it works quite well. It’s a very worthy adversary in the land of current heavy albums.
Standout Tracks – “Decay”, “The Royal Body”, “Blackout” and the 16 minute tune “Behind The Glass”.