Review Summary: Wormed tighten and refine their sound, finally fully distinguishing themselves from the brutal death metal pack.
While the last two Wormed records demonstrated unusual levels of originality for a brutal death metal band, they did still somewhat languish in poor production (especially in the case of
Planisphaerium) and slightly weak songwriting. That said,
Quasineutrality did show the band on the ascent, and
Exodromos only heightens the band's achievements, demonstrating the fullest of the band's songwriting abilities so far while providing perhaps the album that will put them leagues ahead of their rivals.
Notably, this album has extremely clear production compared to the prior efforts by this band, which helps, as this time around the instruments are no less unrelenting than prior. What's more, the band certainly utilizes a greater mixture of sounds into their songs this time; the guitars use dissonant chords and droning notes to a much greater extent than on their prior releases and succeed with keeping the strength of their regular riffs, while the drums vary in tempo quite a lot. Various samples of white noise are also used at times, admittedly in way that doesn't really contribute too much, but it does provide a bit of atmosphere, while tracks like
Solar Neutrinos also add a significant amount of mood, something missing from their prior work. Perhaps the only real sticking point is the vocals, which are quite monotonous and can get a little annoying towards the end of the album, although the strengths elsewhere do render it comparatively unimportant.
The album does provide a reasonable amount of variation as a whole, with the aforementioned
Solar Neutrinos, as well as
Darkflow Quadrivium and
Xenoverse Discharger (the latter of which is likely the best track present) providing a greatly different sound to other areas of the album, which is good, seeing as the brutality of most of the tracks could become a little tiring sans the occasional change in styling. That said, it's not even as though the other tracks are too lacking in variation in themselves -
Tautochrone's occasional melodies and rapidly changing structure,
Technikox Wormholes's prominent droning and tempo variation, and
Multivectorial Aeionization's grooves all provide a bit of individuality to the tracks. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the generally frequency of these elements from getting a little tiring towards the end.
All in all, this is probably not an album that will convert people into fans of the brutal death metal genre because it still suffers issues with variation and ecletic song structures that could put off many listeners. However, it does manage to provide a set of sounds that expand upon the usual template of the genre, and as a result it's likely to be the strongest album in the genre this year.
Recommended tracks:
Tautochrone
Xenoverse Discharger
Multivectorial Aeionization
