Wormed - Planisphaerium

The promotional copy for this album is hilarious: “Wormed constantly pummels you with a massive onslaught of super brutal death metal throughout this release. There is some crazy concept behind this album that deals with space travel and the human consciousness. The heavy guitars scratch through your ear drums, the powerful blast beats pound on your skull, and those low growls from the gut sink into your head.” I want whoever wrote this to do my eulogy.

Don’t be scared off by “super brutal death metal.” Sure, it has the requisite pig squeal vocals, but otherwise this album is more like a Willowtip release in its precision and technicality. No gory artwork, no drum machines, no disgusting lyrics. Instead, you get Tron artwork and lyrics like “Reconstruction in the amorphous line of time / Powerful emanation of energy / I see the constellations changing colour / Mathematical combination of triangular visions.” How you can not love this band?

Planisphaerium is only 25 minutes long (the reissue adds six bonus demo and promo tracks), but that’s the perfect length for this material. The drumming reminds me a lot of Flo Mounier, especially in the “ba dunk, ba dunk” grooves that sound like someone falling down stairs at high speed. “Geodesic Dome” even has a Cryptopsy-esque discordant clean guitar break. Thus, this isn’t the most original album in the world, but I can’t stop listening to it. The songs are short and unpredictable, sometimes busting out with random clean guitar or bass breaks. The riffs are hairy, the drums are crisp, and the production perfectly balances these aspects.

Supposedly this Spanish band is working on new material, but until that surfaces, this is its only album. Distribution for it is next to nonexistent, so you can get it from its website.