ALBUM REVIEW: DEATH FETISH BY MOODRING
Reviewed by Cecilia Pattison-Levi
Release date 27 March 2026
The 12-song album ‘Death Fetish’ from Atlanta alternative-metal band Moodring is a dark, honest, inventive and confounding album about health struggles, facing limitations and death. It has elements of nu-metal hardness, industrial metalcore, shoegaze softness and flourishes of 1990s alternative rock melodies and sounds filtering through a retro but futuristic sound palate. The production values on the record really highlight the juxtapositions between melody and hard driving instrumentation, but the surprise is in the poetic lyricism.
The album begins with the drum heavy and brittle guitar melody of ‘Half-Life’. The sound has great clean singing with screams throughout the song trying to break through and the two melodies carry the emotional weight of the song. ‘Cannibal’ has a jittery and kinetic sound, detonating with the huge explosive bassline riffs like the ‘venom’ that is “eating him alive”. It is followed by ‘Masochist Machine’ with its thick, apocalyptic groove, vocal movement and crunchy synths as “fake it” action becomes the thing. The song is an album highlight.
The electronic introduction and pulsing synths bring in ‘Gunplay (Suicidal 3way)’ which becomes a huge metal track with big instrumentation and powerful vocals where “there is nothing to analyse”. ‘Ketamine’ has a dark piano melody and spectral vocals passed through a vocoder. It’s spaced and drugged out in a delicate sound that has a sense of creepy menace as “cancer of the soul” where you “don’t want to come down”. It’s another album highlight. It is followed by ‘Anywhere But Here’ that documents a relationship breakdown. The song’s moody, quiet-loud dynamics, rich layers, and palpable sonic tension are another thrill ride. It’s the perfect execution of industrial ambience and metallic edge.
‘Stay The Fuck Away’ or ‘STFA’ ups the aggression and it’s a great alternative rock song with a killer chorus. ‘Oxidized’ changes the mood again with lovely synths and a gentle drum beat as the protagonist “bleeds out all over you” as we are “going nowhere”. The aggression pulses through the song as life “is never enough and covered in blood”. Then, ‘Bleed Enough?’ has a heartbeat rhythm and harsh vocals with a huge machine gun bassline underpinning the song and clean singing.
The album starts to close with ‘Sickfuck’ with its distorted bassline riff and heavy metal psycho delivery. Perfect for headbanging along! The following track is ‘Die Slow’ that talks about the “cancer in the flesh” and a plea about “I do not want to die”. It is an affecting song of electronic flourishes, big guitar riffs and darkness with very interesting lyricism.
The record ends with ‘Coldmetalkiss’. Moodring (Hunter Young, Sean Dolich, Lindy Harter and Kalan Adam Blehm have created an album that deals with the eternal issue: in the midst of life, we are in death. It is a testament to the human drive to create and the album is a melodic beauty but with a harsh heavy metal edge.
If you like to think and engage with music and the lyricism around challenges, we will all face, then ‘Death Fetish’ is the album for you: it’s beautiful, fragile and hardcore.
