Description
STREET DATE 1/7/22
PROS102831
Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, an early incarnation of the group was more of a hardcore/punk band but as the band’s influence of Celtic Frost, Darkthrone and Disfear started showing up more in their music, they chose to re-brand themselves as Wormwitch. In October of 2015, they released their first EP, The Long Defeat. In early 2016, No Clean Signing premiered a new track, Coffin Birth, describing it as a “high-octane rush of deep, grinding riffs, piston-driven drumming, and thundering bass, with a heavy-as-hell production.” It was then that they caught the attention of Prosthetic Records and soon a worldwide deal was struck. The band remarks: As far as the making of the album goes, this is our first full length release, and it’s got our fingerprints all over it. If something was possible to do ourselves, we did it, down to mixing and artwork. To go from recording a demo over a couple days in a sweaty jamspace, to putting out an LP on prosthetic within a year and a half… it’s just not something we could have realistically expected. I can safely say that I have never put so much care into a release before; it’s consumed me since the beginning. It’s now at the point where I just can’t wait any longer to release it to the world. Thematically, the album has a lot to do with being alive. We live in a society both obsessed with, and terrified of death. We exist in a world constantly seeking immortality through fame or gods. Strike Mortal Soil is a phrase that came about during the writing that has, to me, come to mean: living with a furious passion,to go to my grave like lightning, in rejection of eternity. Total annihilation… I won’t gaze at the river of life and agonize over it’s every bend, I’ll just walk alongside it, my feet in the water, until I reach the shores of it’s end. Beyond that there’s a message that life has worth, and it doesn’t come from your nationality, your land, your god, or your flesh, but what you do with yourself. We aren’t born into strength, strength is earned. And that’s essentially it; we’ll wave the flag for that message everywhere we go.
Wormwitch will enter Rain City Recorders later this month with producer Curtis Buckoll (Archspire) to begin work on their debut full length album, due out early 2017. Regarding the direction of the new material, the band comments, “it’s darker, heavier, more thoughtful, more primitive, and heavily rooted in the classic rock and metal sound that has shaped the genre, while still being uniquely Wormwitch.”
Tracklist1. As Above
2. Howling From the Grave
3. Weregild
4. Even the Sun Will Die
5. Relentless Death
6. Cerulean Abyss
7. Everlasting Lie
8. ...And Smote His Ruin Upon the Mountainside
9. Mantle of Ignorance
10. So Below