Wormed
Planisphaerium

I had to stop what I was doing to review this record: it is absolutely stunning and what I regret most is having left it there without giving it a listen for about eight months…

To give you an idea of what I'm about to review, I could start by telling you that the Cryptopsy have found rivals in technique and the American Disgorge for extremism; it's not an exaggeration, I assure you, it's the pure truth. These five guys come from a country that certainly isn't among the richest in the realm of Brutal Death metal, namely Spain: for heaven's sake, there are some extreme bands (Machetazo, Impure, Avulsed, Visceral Damage) but they don't stand out in any way from all the others that populate this planet (yes, you heard right, Brutal Death even exists on other planets).

Wormed, on the other hand, prove capable of challenging even the most solid and established realities of both the old and new continents. As you have guessed, their offering is definitely one of the most uncompromising around, and I wouldn't hesitate to define it as the most extreme that has ever reached my ears; it is uncommon for a band to surprise me with the sense of destruction it manages to create, but even though I'm accustomed to this type of sound, I have remained equally astonished.

The violence is not a function of some clichéd splatter tableau, but manages to permeate everything around us, blackening things, thoughts, and feelings within a few minutes. However, I would prefer to delve into the details and go beyond the strictly sensory and emotional side. What stands out most is how these guys have managed to interpolate such an extreme proposal with an attempt to look forward and evolve the overused genre stylings: it's no coincidence that the groups I mentioned are Cryptopsy (undoubtedly among the most progressive) and American Disgorge (equally undoubtedly among the most relentless and hard-hitting).
The technique reaches levels that for a debuting band ("Planisphaerium" is their first album, excluding a Demo) are absolutely inconceivable and manages to equal that of sacred monsters of the genre like those mentioned above. It is disconcerting how the Iberian quintet executes pieces of unheard difficulty, rich in "stop and go" and other diverse traps.

As always, it's the rhythm section that represents the group's core; the drummer is the best you can find on the market and manages to create an absolutely impenetrable web, rich with lightning out of the blue. Crazy speeds aren't enough, our guy decides to play practically all rhythms in counter-time with the other instruments, without sparing us from almost continuous odd times (do you remember Meshuggah's ones? Well, something similar but infinitely faster).
The blast beats, as ubiquitous as they are, are overturned and their function is completely reshaped; they no longer serve to accelerate and constitute the substrate of the songs, they are a part of the song that deserves as much attention as the riffing. The drummer’s inventions seem endless and do not neglect funeral slowdowns, always strictly out of time.

But the delicacies don't end here; the riffing, in fact, is at the top of the category for complexity and weight. The influences of Cryptopsy are very evident here, both from the first (darker) and the last period (more avant-garde), which are also felt in the refined interludes and acoustic breaks, decidedly close to Jazz and inserted without too much ceremony into the midst of the sound devastation. The scores intertwine in a distorted and unnatural way while managing to give life to an organic concept full of extensions in every direction; from one main thread, they move to another, in a continuous alternation between riffs that trigger adrenaline rushes and seem to want to take flight and others that violently and once again plunge everything into the bends of a constricting nothingness.

Outstanding even is the performance of the bassist, who thanks to his skill, manages to stand out among the others in the most chaotic moments and perform in amazing virtuosos with pauses and slaps (a technique also used in Jazz). Finally, the singer; what can I say, at first I was quite dissatisfied with his work as I have reasons to believe he uses a distorter, but then I realized it was the only vocal style possible to insert into a similar context. His growling is truly much lower than average, as already mentioned, a result of electronic modifications (which fortunately do not make it annoying, as often happens), and he never lets himself go to scream in order not to lighten the sound: indeed, using an unfiltered voice, typical of early '90s Death, would have been a blatant anachronism that would have clashed decidedly with the played music.

The production is perfect, able to highlight all sounds without affecting the cd’s suffocating atmosphere; “Planisphaerium” indeed has the additional merit of detaching from that long list of technical albums completely devoid of mood. Despite the eight songs being meticulously curated and consisting of numerous mentally challenging knots and nodes, emotions are not sidelined; rather, in every “arabesque” of these songs, an apocalypse and a sinister sense of death are put into music.
And the sense of panic can only increase upon reading that the song titles do not concern any of these things, excluding, therefore, that it is just another prank by a Brutal Death band. I believe I have still been unfair regarding the value of this “Planisphaerium”; an exceptional cd, which I place without a shadow of doubt above all the mileposts of the genre (including various cds by Death, Cryptopsy, and Suffocation) if not for mastery and songwriting, certainly for what such a record means in 2006 (actually in 2005, the year of publication). Those who believed that Brutal Death had nothing more to say will have reason to rethink listening to how Wormed have managed to prove the opposite.

The only recommendation I can make goes straight to those who expect a radical product but not so much; if you are not ready to face true nihilism or if you don’t have Deeds Of Flesh as your mobile ringtone, skip it outright…