WORM

WORM “Bluenothing”

By Dr. Abner Mality

WORM created quite a stir with their last album “Foreverglade”. The combination of primitive death/doom and psychedelic weirdness announced the arrival of an idiosyncratic band who did things their way. Well, they strike while the iron is hot with this mini-album containing some tracks left over from the “Foreverglade” sessions.

The title track and “Centuries of Ooze II” see WORM firmly anchored in the funeral doom genre, with two songs that crawl along at a glacial place. The former track runs for over 10 minutes and is an odd yet entrancing mixture of DISEMBOWELMENT style funeral doom with Hammer Horror style organ music and shredding guitar solos that remind me a lot of James Murphy in his OBITUARY phase. If you like super slow and heavy metal with tons of atmosphere, this will be up your cobwebbed alley. “Centuries of Ooze II” is about half the length but also navigates the same territory, with yet more of that Murphy type soloing.

Then the next two tracks take a dramatic turn and one I don’t think works quite as well for WORM. “Invoking The Dragonmoon” is a brief instrumental of spooky synths that is very much like something in the atmospheric black metal vein. “Shadowside Kingdom” starts the same way, almost completely keyboard oriented, but then morphs into black metal of the late 90’s Swedish style, something like LIMBONIC ART. To me, it’s OK but the stylistic diversion just doesn’t seem as effective as their more death and doom metal oriented stuff. I can see the occasional side trip into this kind of material, but I’m hoping this is not where the bulk of their future music goes.

One thing’s sure...it will be most interesting to see where WORM’s next full length goes.

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WORM