WORMWITCH - Strike Mortal Coil
June 10, 2017, 6 years ago
(Prosthetic)
Vancouver’s Wormwitch lay down a pretty fun debut here with Strike Mortal Soil, the band showing their love for the fun side of black metal loud and clear throughout the 40-minute album. I mean, just check out the rockin’, Disfear/Converge-lovin’ riff at 3:15 of “Weregild” for a good kickstart; “Even The Sun Will Die” sounds like a modern-era black metal “God Of Thunder”, more classic rock than classic Emperor. Sometimes the sounds clash instead of mesh, though; I’m not convinced that all of the southern metal riffing, like on “Relentless Death”, works without sounding at odds with the blackened vox, for example.
When they’re playing it a bit closer to the blackened heart, like on “Mantle Of Ignorance”, however, the band make up for what they lose in fun with satisfying, intense, straight-faced black metal. The slower, more epic parts work, too; it’s all here, and it all works, it just sometimes doesn’t quite make sense coming out of the same band. But then there’s the death grunt at 3:38 of “…And Smote His Ruin Upon The Mountainside” and it’s hard to not give Wormwitch an approving thumbs up.