Sometimes when you self-title an album, you’re pretty much telling the world , “Thisis us. This is what we fucking represent, this album here.” And goddamn if WORMWITCH didn’t hit the nail on the head with this one. Four albums in and this Canadian trio rips black metal ass from beginning to end. Robin Harris (vocals), Colby Hink (guitars) and Izzy Langlais (drums) are a force to be reckoned with.
Album to album, there is no mediocrity, no duds. Just aggressive as fuck throughout, like a bully kicking your teeth in before you can catch a breath.
‘Fugitive Serpent’ starts off the album no holds barred and without mercy. The absolutely furious guitars and drums mix perfectly with the waspy, screeching vocals. But then ‘Envenomed’ kicks in with squealing guitars at first, which meld into majestic, powerful riffs matched only by the sweltering drumming. The vocals are a fucking swarm of malefic locusts. The bludgeoning guitars on also-aggressive ‘The Helm And The Bow’ are only dominated by ‘Inner War’, opening with acoustic guitar leading into machine gun riffs and drums which sound like a stampede of encephalitic mammoths trampling a diseased virgin.
The middle of the album remains very consistent with what has gone before with ‘Godmaegen’ carrying on the devastation. ‘Salamander’, with its acoustic, slightly tribal rhythm goes well with ‘Wormsblood Necromancy’, an old school, chugging riff with power metal vibes interconnected with a sprinkle of black metal for good measure. A gentle chirp of midnight crickets is demolished by a head-shattering miasma of pure fucking black metal animosity on ‘Bright And Poisonous’.
Before you can stop your eardrums from bleeding, ‘Draconick Sorcerous Canadian Witchknights’ wraps it all up with guitars that could wake the recently desecrated.
Words cannot describe enough the impact WORMWITCH is having in the black metal world, climbing their way to the putrid top of the chain. The band consecrated the genre with no fucking apologies. And that makes me enormously fucking happy.
Review by, David Simonton
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