Worm
Foreverglade

From the swampy lands of Florida comes the putrescent Foreverglade by Worm, dated October 2021. The constants of the sound include within its darkness black and doom, with sharp heavy accents and a mephitic funeral air. The grind of the voice retraces monstrosities and is also expressed on the abrasive scream side (reinforcing the choral power when they overlap).

Why should value be given to an album that paints a region of the spirit dark and shows slow, heavy, and lashing scenarios, exhausting through that horrific taste for taking it leisurely in torturing, with riffs and drums, the listener's soul? Because listening to the work, a labyrinthine disfiguring disdain emerges.

Where everything languishes and drags into the depths of the mire, under the pounding drums that thud and hammer cyclically like a terminal pendulum, rises the heavy metal soul unsheathed by the great solo guitar, in search of a pale sun beyond the miasmas of the clouds clogging that area of origin (Empire Of The Necromancers and Subaqueous Funeral).

The ethereal cobwebs of the synth, frayed among the gloomy, dark, livid shrubs, give the venomous funerary aura that adds anguishing dissonances counterbalanced by the arpeggios and riffs of the six-string (Cloaked In Nightwinds and the perfect compendium of Centuries Of Ooze), at least as long as the reinvigorated rhythms do not try to surpass them, thus freeing the entire apparatus that resonates oppressive, suffocating (Foreverglade), discordant from a homogeneous vision of sound.

The death metal attitude brings out a general perception of corruption in those who play, which seems to be the distinctive feature of this album, further degrading that brutal, disorienting in melodic parts, witnessed throughout.

And indeed there is no salvation during this listening, except in the psychedelic cover (which represents a glaring acidic contrast with the tarry sound tones) and spanning astride the well-placed flashes assigned mainly to the guitar, and the solid support of the rhythmic part. The disunity, the scanning times too latent, reveal the production's hand that is probably admirable in creating long, diverse sound modules, making Foreverglade appealing even to palates not affected by the macabre, managing to be as cinematic and troubling, as it is interesting and challenging.

Phantom Slaughter: Vocals / Guitar / Synth / Bass
Nihilistic Manifesto: Additional Guitar / Solos
L. Dusk: Session Drums
Equimanthorn: Additional Synth

Mixed and Mastered by Stephen DeAcutis at Sound Spa Productions

Cover and interior artwork by Brad Moore