An enjoyable spraying of tooth decay and phlegm here from this Italian five piece, who manage to marry the eerie rumble of ‘Inside the Torn Apart’/’Words from the Exit Wound’ era Napalm Death, the concussive melody of Cult of Luna and the chest compressing power of Gorguts into three easily digestible chunks.
Opening with ‘Unscented Walls’, I’m quickly met with welcome of slow, sludgy disharmony, raw nerve roars and bile soaked force. This slowly gathers paces into a raging mechanical Gorguts-ian styled beast, jangling the nerves and toasting the senses. The guitars sound thoroughly distended with putridity, weaving their strangulated guts all over the place, like some aural horror show. At times the melody takes a strong form, taking hold of the music by echoing sorrowfully over the proceedings in a Paradise Lost/Katatonia styled death doom style, before your bones are again cracked by the downward force of sludge, your marrow drained by powerful rhythms and you’re drowned by the filth once again. ‘Kairos’ is the shortest track on the album, but makes up for its brevity with lashings of pure spite, battering the listener into submission with squirming guitars, powerful drum work and the usual sore-throated post-hardcore bellows of anguish I’d come to expect from their opening salvo.
Finishing up with the EP title track ‘Heartworm’, you’re almost lulled into a false sense of security with the eerie melodic introduction, replete with acoustic guitar and sorrowful melody echoing over the top. This is (of course) before the track properly kicks in with strange rhythms, bone crushing brutality and more of the top notch disharmony which these guys utilize to great effect in their earlier pieces. I can even here a bit of Swans influence on this track, which certainly goes down well in my books.
All in all, for a relatively new band (they’ve only released a single demo before this EP), it’s a fairly impressive start. I could definitely use a full length from these guys, but for an introductory taster to their art, this EP has done very nicely indeed. One to keep an eye on for the future!
(7/10 Lars Christiansen)
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