EP Review: Three Dead Fingers-Next Species: Part 1 & 2

Swedish metal quartet Three Dead Fingers completes their ambitious double EP, For the Next Species, Pt. 1 & 2, marking a major evolution for the band, embracing more progressive elements than their previous two albums.

For The Next Species

Since Three Dead Fingers released Breed of the Devil in 2019, they have always carried themselves forward with a kind of volatile clarity; it's not just about their love for creating heavy music but about creating music that articulates the anxieties of a generation raised on while at the same time burdened by the stain of instability. With the band’s new release, For the Next Species 1 & 2, the band finesses that instinct into something more unique, conceptual, and cinematic. For the Next Species comes at a time when the band is operating in a rare space of budding ferocity and sharp thematic ambition, where two EPs are converging into one emotional arc, telling the story of the before and after of a world vicissitating faster than any of our minds can grasp. Comprised of seven tracks, For the Next Species 1 & 2 offers an unsettling, prophetic experience that forces one to realize the future is coming and strangling whatever remains that makes us human, whether we choose to accept it or not. What emerges is a two-part narrative on physical and internal mutation, biological, emotional, and societal, and the nail-biting truth that evolution often feels cold, calculating, and rarely reeks of the positive depiction of progression when your future is negatively impacted by the blow of its change.

From the beginning, “Apes” and “YAMAA” open the gates to a world internally in shock, its bedrock crippled and shifting as one tries to grasp its last memory of normalcy. Jagged, restless, and impatient, both tracks lean into a state of pandemonium, with sharp rhythmic twists and turns, serrated guitar riffs, and vocals oscillating between raging accusations and individualistic melodic confessions. Such gorgeous ebbs and flows continue throughout the rest of the record, its introductory tracks serving as a warning flare to a species just now waking up to the fact that they may not survive from their own habitually destructive habits. With tension coating every measure, For the Next Species moves from the space of being trapped in a world of inherited mistakes to one of hurtling down a path of grim uncertainty and extinction, made by our own hands.

Three Dead Fingers

“Pest the Rose,” “Love, Death _ Ecstasy,” and “Five 0 Zero” continue from this path of frenetic trauma to one that feels more focused and accepting of the world around them. Tighter in its songwriting decisions, with deeper-cutting melodies, Three Dead Fingers, at this point in the album, sounds more confident and deliberate in what they are creating, much like in life when one is cut open by the shock of terrible experiences, only to be numb and humbled by them the next. The heaviness at this stage of the album is not about impact but about creating atmosphere for the world they have introduced the listener to. Part II is more about acceptance, not in a way that feels downtrodden or defeated by circumstance, but in a way that animals adapt to the world that is changing around them; they adapt because they don’t have a choice but to. Stretching across the three tracks, Three Dead Fingers explores even darker textures, dynamic pacing, and heightened emotional palettes. It’s a part of the album that has the listener experience evolution in real time, making the last two tracks, “Dog Diver” and “Coward in Blue,” hit with much more impactful emotional force. Where the first part of the EP was about chaos giving way to clarity, Part II finalizes such clarity with fear manifesting into transformation, its gesticulating guitar riffs moving from technical melodic poise to dagger-sharp and heavy guitar lines and drums, instrumentally constructing growing up in a world that is burning towards the edges of non-existence.

Three Dead Fingers

For The Next Species Parts 1 & 2 is about fear and how it becomes so thick and dense that it becomes inhuman and unrecognizable. From fear stems guilt for inheriting a broken world and the pressures of being held accountable for past actions, expecting the next generation to clean up the prior one’s mistakes. It's about a world built on destruction and rebirth, and how sometimes the next species isn’t about a physical being carrying on the next torch of existence; sometimes it's about changing internally or ideologically to fix what's broken on the surface. In order to shed the mistakes and wrongs of the past, we must shed a part of ourselves, be it identity or expectation, to bring about the very change we seek. For the Next Species is a smartly written piece that articulates the pressures of change that weren’t asked for, but we still press on, hoping that our metamorphosis will make the world better than when we found it.