Wormrot
Dirge

As if they were playing ping-pong in your head. This second album from Wormrot, unknown to me until a few hours ago, gave me this impression for two excellent reasons, maybe three, at least one of which is totally personal. The guys play a not strictly linear grindcore (even though fully within the genre's standards), and this alone would be enough to make most brains bounce from one wall of the skull to the other. Moreover, they come from Singapore, and their almond-shaped eyes remind me of those table tennis players from the Far East, with whom our guys compete both in execution speed and the piercing screams they emit while practicing their craft. A third factor, completely incidental and probably related to personal perception, which however deserves a note of demerit concerning the album's production, is the bass drum sounding at times like one of those children's drum sets I have always envied, never had, and cannot recall the brand of.

Discovered by Digby Pearson on the internet after the release of their first album "Abuse," later reissued by Earache, which offered them a contract, these three friends, these rather ordinary boys, have decided to make their new album "Dirge" available in streaming for an unspecified number of months on the said label's website, and here it is, downloaded and reviewed.

After an introductory track, the foot hits the accelerator in an alternation of blast beats and screams, now more agonized, now more guttural as is best in grindcore since the days of Lee Dorrian. There are moments to catch your breath and stomp your feet to feel the ground, but there's definitely no time to brush your hair and tidy up your outfit, so avoid the Sunday best, better a pair of shorts (short and for ping-pong). The tracks flow quickly in a single stream where it’s hard to distinguish them but certainly not to appreciate them: there are countless interesting points scattered throughout this album both in terms of drumming and riffing, even if expecting to remember all the titles and lyrics by heart might be a bit ambitious. It is particularly striking that the shortest track on the album (which counts 25 tracks in 18 minutes) is titled "You Suffer But Why Is It My Problem," sounding like a brief nod to those who are undoubtedly the most authoritative grandparents of the current grindcore scene, Napalm Death, representing the more massive face of these almond eyes, leaving Brutal Truth to represent the more schizophrenic and epileptic side. The album closes with the longest track, an instrumental piece which, precisely due to the absence of vocals, opens the widest spaces in our dense but short ping-pong marathon, as if to say that the match is still open. You just need to sit comfortably on the couch, waiting for the athletes to dry their sweat and return to our small screens to exchange the white ball: shortly, indeed, an EP is expected to continue the exploration undertaken with this second platter in their career.

Four because they are under Earache coming from Singapore, four because they are a genuine and independent reality, four because I listened to the album three times while reviewing it and liked it more each time, even managing to memorize some of its fragments, which is not something everyone can do in grindcore.