Wharflurch's Hallucinatory Horror Lurks in the "Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell" (Early Album Stream)
With metal, “what you see is what you get” is often a best-case scenario: there’s far too many tragic tales of amazing album art with just-okay music that couldn’t possibly live up to the insanity of its art. Fortunately, Wharflurch‘s debut full-length more than delivers on this front: the psychedelic filth on the cover of Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell is, if anything, understating the majestic bizarrity of the sewer-full-of-drugs death metal found within. Each song title is more outlandish than the last, and the psychedelic devastation wrought within each track that much more intense: dive in now ahead of its Friday release.
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Even if, for some fun-hating reason, the strange synths, cybernetic vocals, and cavernous reverb were stripped away, what we’d be left with here is absolutely crushing death/doom. Sensitive to the crucial dynamics of tempo in this genre, Wharflurch knows when to slow down and when to, well, not: flurries of tremolo riffing crash convert into ungraceful stomps with whiplash-inducing precision. On top of this meat-and-potatoes mastery, haunting leads along with delightfully retro synthesizers float into the gruesomely kaleidoscopic grotto: come for the riffs, stay for the inescapable horror.
On “Phantasmagorical Fumes,” the Floridians venture further into spacy, progressive textures: heavy on the synths and doom, the hallucinatory miasma created by the song’s mid-section is so strong one can almost smell it. The ripping conclusion to the song brilliantly ties this together with death metal, returning to a fast-paced scramble before breaking back down into a slow, mournful progression to wrap it up.
The album concludes with its title track, a perfect encapsulation of Wharflurch’s unusual sound and what makes this so compelling: the weird vocals that start it off, plus the lengthy decaying outro, are delicious atmospheric packaging for another punishing death/doom track crafted to get you headbanging regardless of wherever you might be at the moment. Join Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell‘s descent into madness as this final track screeches and howls to an end, and then go start the album over again.
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Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell releases September 3rd via Gurgling Gore and Personal Records.
