Wormrot
Voices

If you want to get a sense of Wormrot, watching this video might be a good attempt. Three nice young men from Singapore, well-composed and conscientious, discussing the state of their art next to a drawing of two swollen dicks. At the end of the interview, conducted in a bizarre Anglo-Indo-Malay pidgin, the guitarist awkwardly refuses a bottle of water.

The first thing to note about "Voices" is that, even though it is the Grindcore album of 2016, it is produced and played with (swollen) balls: Arif, on the microphone, continues to do whatever the hell he wants, Rasyid's adept guitar weaves fine threads of granite, and the new drummer, one Vijesh, is even better than the mysterious Fitri, who, according to the band itself, has sunk into a mess too deep to endure; and this, even when the drums reach unheard-of celestial heights, is something we regret.

The second thing to say is that the first 6 minutes, after proper listening, have proven to be a head-banging spectacle: it begins by recalling the past (in the form of "Abuse"), but continues on "Hollow Roots," flaunting right from the start the new Converge-like guitar progressions that the group has added to its sound. After these 6 minutes, there's "Fallen Into Disuse," which starts like "Unchallenged Hate," and therefore I like it; it proceeds with Wormrot-quality Grind - excellent, hyper-technical, and varied - and ends with what, unfortunately, I think is its major weak point: the ending. On this record, as per tradition, the 5-second blows are not missing; however, in the concluding part, there are three tracks that reach or exceed three minutes: they may or may not appeal, to me, given the context, they do not. The desire to experiment is sacred, but in Grind bands, it always scares me a bit: it has been worse, but the ending ultimately drags on making "Voices" too long: yes, 26 minutes can be too much. Time will tell if Earache's protégés will return to their hard and pure roots or continue down this path with more conviction and, above all, I would say, more effectiveness.

The third thing is that after the first song, I was like the dark-haired girl on the cover, the one with the half-open mouth. Ten minutes later, I was already like the blonde girl...