Perhaps you’ll recall seeing Worm’s name in last year’s ‘Best Demos of 2016’ edition of Demo:listen when both Iron Bonehead’s boss and I were caught gushing over Worm’s demo, Nights in Hell. We were breaking the Demo:listen rules a little, because Nights in Hell wasn’t the USBM abomination’s first release, but since they called it a demo, that was good enough for us.
Now here we are almost a year later, and Worm, backed by Iron Bonehead, are ready to release their debut full length, Evocation of the Black Marsh. Worm’s debut LP is a stagnant water-logged recording of eight hallucinogenic tracks of pestilential black metal and fungal doom, somewhere between Panzerfaust, Mortuary Drape’s All the Witches Dance, and some stumbled-upon, moldy demo tape by an obscure death-doom band whose name and all other relevant info has been lost to time and decay.
So it is truly a privilege to present to you an unadulterated stream of Worm’s debut full length. Do not go into this experience unawares. Unpredictable, unconventional and uncompromising, Worm will stain your existence with mephitic black sludge. For Evocation of the Black Marsh is precisely what it claims to be: A total immersion into swampy and fetid darkness. (Our favorite track: “Swamp Ghoul.”)
“My mission was to make a complete swamp concept album that mirrored the natural setting of the true, old Floridian landscapes which I have been planted in all my life,” says Fantomslaughter, Worm’s sole member. “It seemed fitting and honest as I do not have the privilege of living in a frosty, cold environment like most black metal is spawned from. (Although Brazil is one of the many exceptions with Sarcofago, Mystifier, etc.) I wanted to take the obscure black metal sound of the old tape trading days and add a sludgy layer of haunting marsh atmosphere to drown in. This consisted of many long walks in the swamps for inspiration and adding different rotten sounds to my listening rotation with bands such as Goatlord, Morbid Angel – Abominations of Desolation, Autopsy – Mental Funeral, Rottrevore, Abhorrence (Fin), and Disembowelment, all while staying true to the low fidelity sound I have been crafting with Worm.
“Evocation of the Black Marsh contains eight spells cast by a cursed, fallen specter who wanders putrid miles of mire, evoked through a fog-shrouded swamp only to rise and cross the veil to the other side. Haunting the world of the living with unholy blasphemies.”
Get Evocation of the Black Marsh on LP and tape in early November from Iron Bonehead.
