Album Review: Wormhole – Almost Human (Season of Mist)

Technical brutal death metal band Wormhole will release their new album ‘Almost Human’, on the 22nd of September 2023 via Season of Mist.

Almost Human sounds like an apt way to describe Wormhole. A band that creates manic mayhem, combining the sharpness and studious sound of technical death metal with the chaos and carnage of slam. Which probably shouldn’t work, but Wormhole aren’t quite human.

It’s level of intensity, speed, and savagery that probably explains why the album is kept concise. With eight tracks on offer and the full thing coming in at around twenty-five minutes long. Wormhole are all about being as nasty as possible in the quickest amount of time possible. Kicking off the brutality with the abhorrent abrasiveness of System Erase, before really hitting their stride with the confounding sharpness of Elysiism. It’s here that Wormhole really let rip with their ‘tech-slam’ sound and leave one hell of an impression.

Spine Shatter High-Velocity Impact starts hard and heavy and stays that way right through to the end. A gurning and guttural slice of savagery with the added bonuses of impressive technicality that constantly shines through. Then there is Data Fortress Orbital Stationary, a track that is slam through and through, even with Wormhole’s strong sci-fi infusion. It will make you stomp around with complete abandon.

It doesn’t get any less callous or any less manic with Delta Labs or the title track. Here, Wormhole’s coarse death metal side dominates, while the group also find even more space to experiment. Few would expect these tracks, and the album overall, to have as many layers as it does, but that’s Wormhole for you.

With Bleeding Teeth Fungus, they continue to showcase this daring and dangerous concoction with speed. One of the fastest, most erratic tracks on the album. It’s a bone-crunching and muscle-tearing blast of explicit brutality. Before this monster wraps up with The Grand Oscillation, a track that somehow sounds even bigger, even more elaborate, and even more destructive than anything else. Hell, it even has a guitar solo.

Even though every single second of this record has been utter carnage.

Wormhole – Almost Human Track Listing:

1. System Erase
2. Elysiism
3. Spine Shatter High-Velocity Impact
4. Data Fortress Orbital Stationary
5. Delta Labs
6. Almost Human
7. Bleeding Teeth Fungus
8. The Grand Oscillation

Links

Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Season of Mist