Wormrot – Abuse

Label: Earache

I have a pleasant memory, from the Tuska festival in Finland a few years back, when I discovered the delightful “Noxa”, an old school Grindcore band from Jakarta in Indonesia. They were simply a group of 4 cheerful asians who didn’t really talk or do anything else, just took the stage and flayed out half an hour of grind, obliterated the assembled Euros, and left (after thanking “Mr Harry”, at the Indonesian Embassy for letting them stay there). Ever since then, whenever I hear anything in the same vein (think Insect Warfare, Napalm Death, Brutal Truth), I always imagine the sweaty chaos of that gig, and the pit frenzy. If a grindcore band can make me remember that gig, but applying them instead of Noxa, then they have succeeded.

Wormrot, like Noxa, are from the far east of Asia, being from Singapore, and also, like Noxa, make me mosh my balls off. Make no mistakes, this is straight up grind, oldschool but not outdated, just without the excesses of extreme metal today. Violent, uncompromising, and fast as fuck. Simple, but playing to that, and instead of getting boring, avoiding any kind of convolution or overcomplication. I don’t know anything about the Asian scene (except that the Japanese love their slam), but from the sound of things they have some kind of movement going down that’s way heavyer than anything the west has done in the past decade of tech death and metalcore jizm. It’s nice to think that for all the dorky kids over here with our 7 string guitars, EMG pickups, and cracked copies of pro tools, on the other side of the world people are just hammering out Slam Metal and Grindcore through cheapass Marshall half stacks and canibalised drum kits.

Wormrot are a 3 piece ala Pig Destroyer (guitar, drums, and vocals). They seem like pretty chill alt bros too, for all that it’s worth. The songwriting on the album is superb, with flowing grindscapes melding blastbeats, grooves and some impressively fast trem work. The lack of more polished production leaves the vocals uncompressed, raw and bestial, with quite a comendable array of noises. Wormrot fucking kill it, and this album took me right back to that pit in Tuska a few years ago. They’re playing deathfest this time round too, so if you’re there, do your best to catch them, they can only be better live. All the more relevant now Insect Warfare are gone.

9/10

Eyelicker

Here they are playing in what is apparently an elevator