Wormwood unveils us its third album.
Created in 2014 in Sweden, the band now composed of J.Engström (guitar, Riket, Withershin), T.Rydsheim (guitar), Nine (vocals, Withershin), D.Johansson (drums) and Oscar Tornborg (bass, Withershin) releases Arkivet.
Notice that we have guest vocals from Moa Sjölander and Walter Basile (Effess, ex-Black Sunrise, ex-Obscure Devotion…) as well as Martin Björklund’s violin (ex-Wachenfeldt).
The band begins with The Archive, a composition with raw rhythmic and melancholic leads. Howlings sometimes wear plaintive tones that perfectly stick to this heady ambience, then riffs become more energetic but also enigmatic for Overgrowth. This song’s atmosphere is quite strange, becoming sometimes weighing while playing on epic solos, then End of Message allow us to breathe with a very quiet introduction before the haunting wave of blackness strikes us. The song is extremely intense, and the various melodies inside only feed this flame, while My Northern Heart offers Folk sonorities. The ritual continues with ice-cold riffs, some clean backing vocals, then Ensamheten develops both catchy and impressive sonorities. Once again, choirs help to create this distinctive ambience haunted by piercing or softer melodies. The band stays into this melancholy associated with raw sonorities and heady melodies with The Slow Drown, a song that develops a tearing progression into the sound, then The Gentle Touch of Humanity closes the album. The song is the longest with its nine minutes, but it is also the most surprising. Of course, Black Metal melodies but the band does not hesitate to add more intriguing harmonics. Sampled voices come to break the rhythm under some airy notes, then the wave of blackness suddenly comes back to flood us with this ice-cold melancholy until the end.
Wormwood’s art is immediately recognizable. On Arkivet, the band develops such melancholy dubbed with ice-cold and seizing blackness we just cannot ignore. This album is indisputably the most intense of their career.
90/100