Wurmian honors the pillars of Melodic Death/Doom Metal.
Created by Antoine Scholtès (Inherits The Void) and assisted by Solène Virsk (drums/arrangements), the project quickly gave birth to its first album, Immemorial Shrine, via a collaboration with label Pest Records.
The album begins with the ethereal harmonics of Aeon Afterglows, which eventually morph into a thick rhythmic pattern that builds again when joined by furious vocal parts. There’s a certain melancholy in the leads, whether clear or saturated, but it’s offset by the obvious aggression, which is echoed with heaviness on Immemorial Shrine, the next track, where the contrast between the two worlds is even more intense. The virulent moments are clearly infused with Old School tonalities, while the aerial passages are filled with a soothing gentleness, as on Haven, which quickly reveals a certain intoxicating and communicative simplicity in its rhythmic, while the leads are more worked out. The combination of these two facets is perfect for conveying the track’s pessimistic message, before becoming a little more brutal with Spires Of Sorrow, which not only propels us through its bloody notes, but also a few clouds of sweetness before we come up against the riffs again. Yearning Unseen barely gives us a moment’s respite, before we’re swept along in its infinite stream of sadness at a relatively variable pace to Sleeping Giants, where a curtain of gloom covers the entire sound. Even the more lively passages are deeply marked by this ponderous tone, from which keyboards or screams occasionally escape, before fading out to allow The Everflowing Stream to take over and hit us in its turn to close the album, not without allowing itself moments of wavering, such as the clear-sounding break held by the keyboards before the return of the jerky riffs that eventually lead us to a brighter final inhabited by tenebrous markings.
If it’s easy to identify Wurmian‘s influences, Immemorial Shrine doesn’t just assemble them to create a strange patchwork, it appropriates them to give each of its compositions a unique soul.
85/100