WORMED

Here we go again, hurtling into the vortex, feverishly anticipating another savage beating at the bloody hand of infernal astrophysics. Even in the overpopulated flesh-pile of the international death metal scene, WORMED were always destined to stand out. Over 25 years and a handful of acclaimed releases, the Spaniards have established themselves as one of the most brutal bands around, but it is the unparalleled weirdness of what they do that clinches the deal.

"Omegon" is only the fourth WORMED full-length in 20 years, but as soon as the opening "Automaton Virtulague" erupts from the speakers, their sound is instantly recognizable and, not for the first time, sonically overwhelming. Shimmering and glitching out in the shadow-space between virtuoso tech-death and the claustrophobic, abyssal churn of the dissonant contingent, Madrid's finest whip up a maze of interlocking, obsidian steel that aims to obliterate everything that gets in its way. The lyrics, in tandem, are fraught with dark sci-fi grotesquery and philosophical black holes. "Multidimensional, geometric manifold, interwoven and fused in unstable polyhedral shells…" may not be the most memorable (or remotely decipherable) line, but WORMED are not here to make things easy. As with all their previous records, "Omegon" offers something almost entirely unique wherein death metal's knuckleheaded power is harnessed, given a cosmic upgrade, and used to hammer home some truly mind-expanding concepts. It starts. It pins you to the wall. Your brain dribbles out of your ears. It ends. Embrace oblivion.

If previous albums occasionally drifted into the unfathomable, "Omegon" does offer one significant change, in that WORMED are a more incisive force, circa 2024. Every last one of these songs is as brutal as anything the band have done before, but there is more clarity in the guitars and a drum sound that hovers artfully between the real and the robotic. Most enjoyably, WORMED have found new ways to write insanely brutal music. The likes of "Pareidolia Robotica" and "Pleoverse Omninertia" have enough whirlwind blasting and guttural vomit to satisfy fans of straight-ahead brutal DM, but there are alien colors and astral horrors leaking through ornate cracks in that militant, myopic façade.

"Protogod" is a fine example of the quintet's perverse approach. There are few bands of any description that could keep up with the ferocious, high-speed assault that forms the spine of this six-minute monstrosity, but WORMED's deviant streak drags the superficially straightforward down a series of harrowing, pitch-black alleys with bursts of demented syncopation and ghoulish sludge woven into a tapestry of straining sinews.

Another moment that will confound all but the most devoted time signature fans, "Aetheric Transdimensionalization" is a truly astonishing piece of death metal songwriting: horribly dark and maliciously unpredictable, it contains an absurd number of great ideas, stitched together into one massive, repugnant monster. Only the closing title track overshadows it. An ever decreasing, black magic circle of blastbeats and interdimensional discord, the seven-minute "Omegon" balances out some deranged rhythmic twists with some of the grooviest riffs WORMED have ever recorded. Once again, the fact that literally no one else sounds like this makes the entire, brain-shattering experience even more satisfying. It's another fantastic voyage into who the fuck knows what. You know the guy with the exploding head in "Scanners"? Yeah, that.