Wormreich - Wormcult Revelations (2014)

Wormreich is one of those band names so fantastic that you just wish you had gotten to it first. These Southerners have a seasoned spin on traditional black metal which remains vile and claustrophobic with some slight nods to ambient orchestration due the incorporation of keys and atmospherics, not only in their own intro/interlude pieces but as an added layer of texture to the blasting violence they induce. I don't recall ever having heard their 2011 debut Edictvm DCLXVI despite the cover seeming very familiar to me, but at any rate Wormcult Revelations has a fairly sinister appearance to it which I believe the band does well enough to match in the songwriting throughput, even if this isn't ultimately 'novel' or something we haven't encountered in the past.

But it's well-paced, and reasonably well-played. Floods of faster guitars and blast beats are interspersed with slower, ominous passages where dissonant picking patterns hover above busier bombardments of double bass, groaning, murmured vocals that evolve into hacking cough rasps which invoke evil. There's enough variation in the structure of the riffs to make a difference, though it all seems coherently oblique and ritualistic in disposition. The harsher usage of the vocalist isn't exactly unique, just a nihilistic traditional snarl which is barked out pretty loudly, occasionally accompanied by a lower-pitched growl for emphasis. The drumming is an incessant thunder through which you can make out a lot of the crashes and toms but the snare is partly subdued. Bass lines are thick flumes of dark subtext which don't often distinguish themselves from the rhythm guitar notes, but in conjunction with those bricklaying kicks they definitely give the album a firm bottom end over which the guitars just simmer with malevolence, or at least try to.

There are definitely some more chaotic, swirling components to the writing that involve driving walls of uncomfortable notes, and there is also a slightly disjointed aesthetic to how they transition from one rhythm to the next, but I took this more as a calculated risk than just sloppy playing. The vaunted, dark choirs, organs, keys and other backing sounds here are used a little more sparsely than the typical symphonic black metal record, but where they appear they definitely give this a more grandiose, subversive horror sensibility. I really enjoyed how the symphonics swelled through "Codex Lvcifervm", which is the most substantial non-metal track on the disc and reminds me a lot of 90s ritual/ambient or dungeon synth, only using a more fulfilling sound set which is akin to the soundtrack for some horror/haunted video game. I felt like Wormcult Revelations actually had just the right balance of the arcane, wondrous and menacing, though if you broke down a lot of the guitars the actual riffs can seem bland in spots. Anyway, while you've got traces of old Euro black metal circa Limbonic Art, Emperor, Mayhem, Old Man's Child or Enthroned in there, they don't resemble anyone too closely, and along with labelmates Haeresiarchs of Dis from San Jose, we might be seeing a new wave of high concept symphonic black metal that's nothing to scoff at. Ugliness meets eloquence.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://www.facebook.com/wormreichofficial

Ectovoid - Fractured in the Timeless Abyss (2012)

Pretty much a textbook case for death metal nostalgia, Alabaman brutes Ectovoid will no doubt draw a lot of comparisons to the US pioneers Incantation, Immolation and Cianide in their use of stripped, authentic battering rhythm guitars and broad, ominous guttural vocals which create morbid, sepulchral atmospheres in contrast to the more harried riffing and eerie, breakout lead sequences. But where a lot of bands seek to drown this same set of influences in ridiculous levels of reverb to create an infinite, cavernous scope to the production, this trio deserves credit for allowing the sheer instrumentation to deliver that same, haunting effect, with loads of drums and constantly winding tremolo riffs that feel as if they were written in that critically important 1988-1993 period when the niche was just taking flight as the bastard child of thrash metal.

There's still a vaulted echo to the Pillard-esque vocals which places the band in the same sphere as many of their young contemporaries, but what I found interesting is that Ectovoid do not write like a bunch of slugs. This isn't death/doom like you'd expect out of, say, Father Befouled. They play fast as a rule, alternating between blasted passages and fibrous grooves which settle somewhere between the realms of Onward to Golgotha, Demilich's Nespithe and late 80s Bolt Thrower. I've read that the band invokes influence also from archaic doom and black metal sources, and I can certainly sense such an imprint, but more as an after-effect than in the actual architecture of the guitars, which are delivered with this oppressive, muddy tone that somehow doesn't manage to hijack the clarity of the notes. There is a quite natural air about the production, as if they made a conscious effort to avoid excess polish and deliver as honest and 'live' a sound as possible, with only the vocals sounding separate, and that's due to their sweltering, unearthly volume and inflection.

Riff-wise, I wouldn't call these the most novel of constructions, but advocates for returning to the analog roots of the style will be happy that they don't sound entirely derivative of other source material. Perhaps not all are patterned as evilly and memorable as one might desire, but Ectovoid floods the listener with such a constant, frothing miasma of churned change-ups and guttural atrocities that one never needs fear excess repetition (if it appears at all, it's only due to the stylistic similarity of so many of the selections). Choppier, slower paced riffs are used to break up the momentum in tracks like "Dark Clouds of Consciousness", walls of open, thundering chords vary up the tremolo picked passages, and the leads are quite well rendered to provide that added dimension of frightful melody that might be lacking in the deeper din of the rhythm section. I always felt like the music was effective, if individual tracks didn't prove all that distinctive from the whole.

Ultimately, Fractured in the Timeless Abyss is like suffocating in crude oil, a consistent and tremulous journey into the opacity of trans-dimensional horror that summons up all manner of Lovecraftian imagery. A cool record for those into other, recent abominations like Binah or Blaspherian.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

http://www.facebook.com/ectovoid

Chaos Inception - The Abrogation (2012)

It surprises me that I could like an album primarily for its lead guitar sequences, but Chaos Inception's sophomore is so strewn with these infectious, incendiary whirlwinds that I can't help but admit they've got it down to a science. But don't mistake my fondness for this particular element of their sound as a condemnation towards the rest of the album, for in full, The Abrogation is one of the best post-Morbid Angel styled death metal efforts I've heard from the US, directly in line with the Alabama quartet's 2009 debut Collision with Oblivion in terms of quality. Even the color schemes of the two albums' artwork give off a similar impression, and yet the hostile vortex and devastated cityscape give an ample warning of the musical content...

You are about to have your temples collapsed and your wet brains popped out your eye sockets, following their aqueous vanguards to the pile of accumulating viscera at your feet. When I say Morbid Angel 'style', I'm referring more to the archetypal, blast heavy aesthetic the band immortalized through their debut album Altars of Madness and, of course, the later Covenant. The riffs rocket off like an avalanche of acrobatic artillery, fast as fuck passages of tremolo picked guitars interspersed with choppier, clinical thrashing riffs that sound and then saturated in frightful arpeggio flurries. Guitar progression after progression collides into one another, almost like fast forwarded tectonic plates crushed together in a waltz of seismic mayhem. It often feels that the album is so fucking packed with intensity that they just couldn't cram any more into its 31 minute duration, lest the Earth around them explode from the shock. Tunes like "Phalanx (The Tip of the Spear)", "Black Blood Vortex" and "Ancient Ways Prevail" are among the top picks, but there's not one of these nine which lags behind.

The drums are beyond human comprehension, and likely to turn a lot of heads which might have been negligent of the first album; but I once again have to mention the solos, these violent fits of beauty, which while hardly novel for the genre feel like lasers that explode from your mind to stretch across the dark universe. Each time Matt Barnes erupts into one of these segments, the music takes on an added level of depth which provides the perfect counterpoint to the standard musculature of the rhythm guitars. Chris White's vocals are nothing out of the ordinary for the genre, but delivered with a percussive aerobics that places them far belong mere ripoffs of the usual suspects like David Vincent, Frank Mullen or Corpsegrinder, whose influence they build upon. The bass is nearly as complex and bewildering as the other instruments, though the thuds were often a little difficult to navigate against the louder bite of the guitars.

If I had any single complaint about the album, it would only be that the songs are so consistent and often similar in nature that they oft seem to blend together, one pummeling into the next, but then the lyrical variations and the brevity of The Abrogation ensures that it never really wears out its welcome. For sure, though, Chaos Inception is proving once more that they're a force to be feared, a healthy hybrid of 90s extremity with a flair for the modern execution and intensity that you often hear from technical West Coast acts. Fans of Morbid Angel, Diabolic, Nile and Hate Eternal really ought to check out this band, but there's enough of an appeal here for nearly any brutal, accelerated death advocate. Destroy destroy destroy.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (banished and besieged)

http://www.facebook.com/ChaosInception