SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WORMED, 1349, WRACH, WOUND COLLECTOR, CEREMONY OF SILENCE

Wormed

I think I’ll begin by previewing some likely disruptions in our usual roll-out of posts during next week.

As you may know, our site is a principle sponsor of Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, which will have its latest incarnation on May 8-10. Andy Synn, DGR, and I (islander) will all be working the fest, beginning with a lot of heavy lifting on the day before it begins, culminating in a pre-fest show that night.

Speaking for myself, I haven’t agreed to any premieres from May 8-10 and it’s unlikely I’ll manage any of the usual weekend posts on May 11-12. Rumor has it that Andy and DGR may write some things in advance to keep us from going dark during those days, and maybe some of our other writers will send things in.

Though I expect to be bleary-eyed every morning, I also hope to at least publish more of Comrade Aleks‘ interviews, many of which I have in hand, as well as an interview from Vietnam by Vizzah Harri.

With that notification out of the way, I’ll turn to a few picks for this Saturday’s roundup of new songs and videos.

It’s just a few picks because I got a late start today, and foolishly used a lot of time making a list of things that came out both before and after the gigantic roundup I compiled for the day before Bandcamp Friday — which just unduly complicated the selection process and simultaneously left me with a lot less time to watch and listen. I think if there’s a through-line to what I chose, it’s that all these songs are head-spinners.

 

WORMED (Spain)

What better way to screw up your efforts to recover from the past work week than a new adventure through space/time from Wormed, which predictably will scramble your brain like eggs in a very hot pan.

The drumming on “Automaton Virtulague” is insane. So is the squirming and squealing fretwork within the music’s blast-front of abrasion and the detonations of humongous crashing chords.

Wormed provide a few brief stops when you can gasp for air, and you’d best use the opportunity, because the breaks are always followed by something strange and stupefyingly brutal, an amalgam of bizarre fretwork twists, waves of scalding eeriness, and bunker-busting explosiveness delivered at high speed.

Of course, the song also comes with bizarre sci-fi lyrics barked and snarled at equally high speed.

The song is the first single from Wormed‘s new album Omegon, due for release by Season of Mist on July 5th.

https://orcd.co/wormedomegon
http://www.wormed.net/
https://www.facebook.com/wormed

 

 

1349 (Norway)

Yesterday also brought us a new stand-alone single from 1349, a relentlessly dynamic and head-spinning song called “Ash of Ages“.

The music blares and contorts, with just enough dissonance in the sounds to create an early air of tension and fear — an effect made more fearsome by vocalist Ravn’s rabid, teeth-gnashing snarls.

The song includes some jolting grooves too, as well as blasting tirades, but there’s no real relief from the song’s distressing effects, as the guitars grow even more dissonant and deranged as they morph, and the pacing shifts without warning.

Visions of writhing serpents in a fiery nest come to mind, because the song is also venomous, and those brazen and blaring chords also begin to sound cruelly imperious.

“Ash of Ages” is out now on digital platforms via Season of Mist.

https://orcd.co/1349ashofages
https://www.legion1349.com/
https://1349som.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/1349official

 

 

WRACH (Wales)

Having been lured into black metal by 1349, I decided to stay there with this next song, which is even more distressing, frightening, and unearthly than the one which precedes it in today’s collection.

“Quae Infra Volo Videre” includes attention-grabbing drum-beats and progressions, livid lycanthropic howls, and unhinged screams, but both the cold ambient ingredients of the song and the mind-scouring riffage channel utterly broken and brutally dismal emotional fractures, shrouded in a hostile, otherworldly atmosphere.

The drums also burst into blasts, and the searing lead guitar convulses into electrifying spasms of pain and madness and creates seizures of paralyzing misery. It proves to be a breathtaking song, even though a very disturbing one.

“Quae Infra Volo Videre” is the just-released title song from this Welsh solo project’s debut album. It will be released on June 20th by Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings, who recommends the album for fans of Deathspell Omega, Mayhem, and Leviathan.

https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/quae-infra-volo-videre

 

 

WOUND COLLECTOR (Belgium)

This next song, “Chicxulub“, shares some of the sensations of the new Wormed song that launched today’s collection. It’s a vicious high-speed whirligig, driven by blistering percussion and screaming and squirming guitars, segmented with bursts of thunderous turbocharged hammering, and fronted by death gutturals that are monstrous.

But what really grabbed me was the fact that the deathly vocalist Peter Verdonck is also a saxophonist, and uses that instrument to make the experience even more strange and captivating (and the arpeggios turn out to be a hooky as well as freakish and psychotropic). The band also have a screamer (guitarist Guy Van Campenhout) to add vocal variety, so that the song is a head-spinner in every aspect.

The video is a fun one too, enabling us to see these marauding maniacs in action, set against backdrops of startling destructiveness.

The song is from an EP named Begging for Chicxulub that will be available soon on Bandcamp. It’s set for release on June 15th.

https://woundcollector.bandcamp.com/
https://www.woundcollector.com/
https://www.facebook.com/woundcollector/

 

 

CEREMONY OF SILENCE (Slovakia)

I have just enough time to add one more song, this one the first single from the second album by Slovakia’s Ceremony of Silence. I’ll begin the introduction with an intriguing description of the album provided the the releasing label, Willowtip:

Hálios represents the unborn luminous radiance, the all-pervading immutable light of the Universe, and our fundamental inherent nature. It is the thousand-rayed Sun, always in motion, but unchangeable, the axis mundi manifesting the sacred within our temporal world and serving as a bridge to the mythical time. The album sets forth on an eerie journey to this sacred dimension, reenacting the old stories inspired by the essence of the ancient Indo-European mythology, entwined in the obscure visions and dreams.

At first, the song “Serpent Slayer” seems intent on roughly scouring out its listener’s brain-pans and simultaneously pounding the scraped skulls into smithereens. And then it ignites into greater madness, shrill guitars twisting and soaring, drums blasting like weaponry, enraged roars coming for the throat.

Dissonance and deviance reign in the extravagant layerings of guitars-and-bass, fascinating in their technically impressive but strikingly bizarre high-speed twists and turns. The drumming is equally unpredictable and inventive, and its bursts of militaristic rattling, in particular, create an interesting contrast with the kaleidoscopic and chaotic convulsions going on around it.

I was hoping for a guitar solo, just to see how high the band could rocket this jaw-dropping spectacle, and thankfully they give us one near the end, just as delirious as one might hope for.

Hálios will be released by Willowtip on July 19th.

https://ceremonyofsilence.bandcamp.com/album/h-lios
https://www.facebook.com/ceremonyofsilence/