Wormed — Krighsu
The album starts very heavy, insistently remaining within the death metal realm with rapid chugging muted chords, dissonant tremolos, blast beats and pig-like grunting / squealing vocals, which persist throughout the album. There's a definite classic, old school flavor to the more straightforward moments of their songs which indicates an appropriate worship of Suffocation. Wormed successfully captures both the clever riff structure and desperate ferocity Suffocation had. There are certainly sparser moshable sections, but none of the tired and obvious breakdown transitions that plagued a number of mid 2000's bands.
The music is very technical, but not overtly progressive, avoiding the flashy sweeps and jazz interludes employed by Obscura or Between the Buried and Me. The band's subtle sense of melody exudes from complex, thickly harmonized chords, an unsettled form of expanded minor key comparable to later Gorguts or Ulcerate. With stoic understated dramaticism, complex arcs are illustrated. As with the best death metal songwriting, each chugging phrase and rhythmic shift is infused with momentum and meaning.
Blatant Meshuggah influence comes through on the 2 minute interlude "The Singularitarianism", a haunting dissonant chord arpeggiation played in ostinato complimented by synthetically enhanced spoken word, sounding exactly like a track from "Catch 33". I find this to be a weak point of the album, as they've done some obvious plagiarizing without bothering to substantiate the song itself as well as the band they copied. Luckily, this doesn't apply to most of the album.
I enjoy the authentic feel of this recording, which doesn't distract from the meat of the music with any hooks or obnoxious gimmickery. There are no forced mixed genre elements, instead we have a fluid execution of a very powerful and cleverly composed style of death metal, played naturally so that there is an infectious sense of rhythm and enjoyment to the entire album. The album's many magnificent riffs are augmented with enough detail to be unique, yet never lose their concise quality, and a certain symmetry.
The production of the album is perfect, balancing dynamism and power in a way almost unheard of before this modern golden age of analog/digital combinations. It is cleanly separated and legible, and yet rich with warmth, roughness and natural tone.
With 10 songs in only 35 minutes, the album is rich with content. It clearly required a massive amount of painstaking effort, and it seems certain that all the details are properly set in place. The song titles and interlude track are a tad cheesy, to be sure, but that's to be expected in this realm of music.