Louisiana has given us some of the greatest examples of metal to grace the world over the past 30 years, continually cranking out tortured tracks to sink our mind into a psychotic abyss to. From the twisted frenetic shrapnel landscape of Eyehategod to the uniquely fucked minds of Acid Bath, the state has given us amazing heights of experimental and pulverizing sonic experiences. Enter WOORMS, a group that toes the experimental and destructive lines by making the listener drown in its confusion. Their 2019 release, Slake, was a mind boggling ascent into the cataclysmic beyond and acceptance of reality. The upcoming WOORMS release, Twitching, As Prey, is a beautifully threaded together mosaic of the flesh of America, and its debilitating inability to see beyond itself.
We are scum. We are flesh. We are prey to ourselves. The brutal nature of a need to find something to shroud our existence and shame is immensely inherent in WOORMS’ latest bubbling cauldron. To the listener this is the exact feeling ‘Fire Is A Bad Master’ creates. The skin blisters until it curdles and cracks from exposure to the visceral sonic output. The raw unbridled experience that is Twitching, As Prey leaps out at you like frenetic monster channelled into a deeply studied experience of sludge history that goes back to Melvins release of Gluey Porch Treatments that ripped the mind into a coagulated mess of sonic experiences.
With this album, WOORMS have once again imparted a bevy of devastatingly tongue-in-cheek tracks that hit your senses like a crowbar to the face, such as ‘Escape Goat’ and ‘Unicorn Corn’. However, the true meat and potatoes of the album roars in your stomach at the start of ‘Fire is a Good Servant’. It acts as a bristling interlude that burns right into ‘Silence and the Saints’ which the band not only released as a single, but acts as the entrance to some special hell that licks the feet of the damned. The sampling elements on the album are an auditory delight particularly on ‘Beauty is a Trick of Light and Sorrow’ and ‘Fire is a Bad Master’. The sounds peel and fall away with burning intensity like skin off of incinerated flesh. Sonic napalm.
The album dies down and the sonic coals emanate a heat that dances through ones ear canals and singe the very center of one’s being. The final track ‘God Botherer’ is an intriguing offering that on any other album from any other region might seem like some nonchalant add on. Here, this could not be farther from the truth. It is an ode, and one of remorse. The simplistic joy and sorrow that emanates from this work is something special to behold that hearkens back to the roots of where the blues and jazz developed in Louisiana. In a way its one of the most honest rebuttals to southern singing circles, and Sacred Harp music. Much like humanity starting a fire, there may have a been an intervening power that created us, but they cannot control us. We merely twitch and convulse as we consume, yet we do not see how we are our own victims as we burn through life.
Twitching, As Prey is released on 27th March via Hospital Records/Sludgelord Records and can be purchased here.
Words: Garrett Tanner
