Demo:listen: Wearg

Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, black, doom, sludge, grind, thrash, heavy, speed, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, punk-, -core, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen we risk getting our faces clawed off to promote the rabid extremism of San Diego’s Wearg.

Here’s something to get your hackles all in a bunch over. San Diego’s bestial black/death metal duo Wearg have quit their torch-lit den to spread their hate-whetted aural animosity among the denizens of this sick world. Wearg’s demo, entitled Heaðen War Metal, is two songs of unmitigated rancor like a semi-automatic catapult loaded with razors, daggers, and fangs, by turns blasting you to shreds and stomping your whole body to smithereens, and bookended by two tracks of desolate dark ambience. Before you know it the last track “Laþ” comes on with discordant piano chords over a soughing synth like waking up in the bleary dawn, totally naked and covered with dried blood with a splitting headache and a vague memory of having undergone some ungodly nocturnal transformation. Because the two songs that precede it are really that violent.

Wræcca: guitars & vocals
Wræcca: guitars & vocals
Anstapa: bass & dark ambience
Anstapa: bass & dark ambience

“Wearg means wild or savage criminal, or insane beast or monster,” explains Wræcca, guitarist and vocalist of Wearg. “Wearg represents the complete rejection of civilized society . . . It uses Old English because it allows us to express the concepts and philosophies of Wearg in a way that connects to the spiritual roots behind the music.” It’s a fitting moniker then for a band that sounds like Conqueror might if they were afflicted with lycanthropy and loosed upon the unsuspecting world. “With the ideas and concepts behind the music, everything always comes back to trying to produce the most hateful and destructive music we can,” adds Wræcca.

For all its belligerent blood-drunk enmity, Wearg’s frenzied attack, after multiple listens, reveals itself to be a thoroughly calculated demonstration of Wræcca’s and bassist Anstapa’s abilities. Still Heaðen War Metal is agonizingly brief. Thankfully, this is a demo so wanting more is by no means a bad thing. But be prepared to turn into a wendigo for this stuff, i.e. the more you get the more you want, the more you need. According to Wræcca Wearg are working on material for “a split with another like-minded band,” but refuses to divulge anything more. Afterward the duo will begin writing their full length for which they’ve already enlisted a session drummer. I’ve been sworn to secrecy regarding the identity of the session drummer, but think of the most appropriate drummer for Wearg’s sound that isn’t J. Read, and you’ve probably got the right guy in mind.

Heaðen War Metal goes up for sale tomorrow (22 April) at Haftvad Records, the same label which has brought you demos from the likes of Werwolfsblut, Legendry, and Demo:listen alums High Command. The masses are already growling and scratching at the door for their copies so sleep on Heaðen War Metal at your own risk.

You heard Wearg first here at Demo:listen. Check this space next and every Friday for promising new metal.