Wormsblood - Mastery Of Creation Demos (Barbarian, 2009)
A couple years ago we reviewed an obscure, DIY cd-r release, In The Stars, by this band Wormsblood. As you might guess from their name, they're an underground black metal free noise new weird America psych folk cd-r band... oh wait you might not guess that. But you'd get the idea this is something dark and strange and evil, right? Not some normal indie rock band that's for sure. And you know this, if you remember our review of that previous release. So, band leader Wyrdskull (an alter ego of Clay Ruby from freak folksters Davenport and psych doomsters Jex Thoth, we have reason to believe) and cohorts are back with a new release, an actual cd this time, though the music is still way DIY and lo-fi (like we like it!), consisting of three "demo" sessions recorded between 2004 and 2008. Though without that info you wouldn't know this wasn't conceived as all one album. Ten tracks total, about 38 minutes of very, very fucked up "metal". Like, if Ariel Pink did even -more- drugs and then tried to produce a black metal album. Or, imagine a black metal Faxed Head (as we said about 'em before). It's that weird, that WRONG. And thus damn right in our ears. 'Cause if we know anything, we know our fucked up black metal. Dead Reptile Shrine, Varghkogargasmal, Vorak, Dead Raven Choir's Cask Strength stuff, old Necrofrost, Wold, etc., this fits right in, not that it really fits in anywhere.
The disc starts off with the amazing/retarded "Fragments Of The Witch" which will either convince you this is the best thing you've heard since you played the Weakling album backwards through a malfunctioning Kaoss pad while screaming at the top of your lungs, or convince you to turn it off. Obviously, we're part of the former camp. A murky, palpitating admixture of primitive, clanking rhythms, truly over-the-top gargled and anguished kokills, dim distorted guitar riffs and woozy synths dealing out Skeptical doom plod. All of it mired in an echoey, almost dubby "production". The next track, "Hollow Cost Nothing", ups the ante with even more majestic, messed up melodies. It dawns on us that whomever is on guitar can really play. Somehow this makes Wormsblood sound even more insane. It also suggests that maybe one way to look at this isn't as an attempt at making tr00 cvlt black metal primitivism, but rather as simply a very, very, VERY damaged version of traditional '80s heavy metal (and we recall they did do a Manilla Road cover on the In The Stars cd-r)...
Then, there's a track that also appeared on that cd-r,"The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken)", which takes a turn into ritualistic ancient folk musick, with a military snare and Muppet-on-meth vocals. It's like Ghost meets Abruptum. Or ESP-Disk's Cromagnon gone metal. That's followed by "Sig Bind", which begins with abstract, Jewelled Antler-y atmospheres before erupting with high-end guitar neck strangle, kind of like a Kemialliset Ystavat meets Krallice mashup. By the end of this track, it's a madhouse of maniacal voices, harshing the mellow with which it began. And on it goes, this disc of demos delving backwards in time, the recordings getting boombox-ier and buzzier, the songs even less songlike and more soundscapey if possible. "Goodnight" opens a can of that Striborg-style aersol spray, a grim sonic mist of vibrating electric strings and hissing exhalations. "Obsessed By The Bloodstone" (is that shout-out to cult pulp fantasist Karl Edward Wagner?) is an ambient piece for keyboard - and barking dog! And then sometimes, they get it together for an extended spasm of, uh, song, full of high pitched singing/shrieking and chaotic drums/guitars.
Now, you might be thinking, there's other black metal releases on this week's AQ list. Yet this is the only one we chose as a Record Of The Week. Does that mean it's BETTER than those other black metal albums? Better than Ayat, or Moloch, or Nav, or the new Satyricon, for example? Well, no, not exactly. But we're not judging this purely as a black metal release. We figured this was something that AQ customers into any sort of bizarre, fucked up music (many of whom love black metal, to be sure) would find intriguing. 'Cause as metal as this is (and it IS, really metal, if you listen close) it's equally something else entirely. There's whole passages of "music" here that sound more like that fake field recordings disc Jurassic Soundscapes, but with lonely werewolves wandering around in the prehistoric swamps. And drugged up pterodactyls swooping about overhead. Wormsblood's sound is as much recognizable metallic instrumentation (guitars, drums, vocals) as it is wyrd sound FX and destroyed noise, rustlings and clankings and howlings.
http://rapidshare.com/files/203742172/wormsblood_-_mastery_of_creation_demos.rar