For @HailsandAles' #BlackMetalMonday:

#Necrofier: Transcend Into Oblivion

https://album.link/i/1844395435

#MelodicBlackMetal

FFO #Cloak #NightCobra #Wormwitch

WORMWITCH Kicks Off Canadian Headlining Tour

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
Wormwitch to Tour Canada Next Month

https://www.metalsucks.net/2025/12/02/wormwitch-to-tour-canada-next-month/

#Wormwitch #TourCanadaNextMonth #tour #announcement #MetalSucks #metal #music

WORMWITCH to Headline Canadian Run in January 2026

#dates #metal #tour #wormwitch

Fell Omen – Invaded by a Dark Spirit Review

By Thus Spoke

If you’re especially in the know, you might already be familiar with the artist behind Fell Omen, Spider of Pynx. Having contributed hurdy-gurdy and electronica skills to two different Spectral Lore records under this moniker, he has also created cover art for Auriferous Flame, Cirkeln, and Μπατουσκα, under the name Gilded Panoply. After years of lurking about the black metal scene, with Invaded by a Dark Spirit, the Spider has the chance to step out of the background and begin their officially ‘metal’ musical arc as Fell Omen.1 Here for a good time, and not a long time, with a runtime barely surpassing 20 minutes,2 Invaded by a Dark Spirit is a lightning round in Fell Omen’s raucous take on black metal.

Invaded by a Dark Spirit is characterized by two main facets: punky attitude and crusty sound—though it’s not exactly crust-punk stylistically. While there are hints of Wormwitch here and there, this is combined with an old Immortal vibe about the riffs and vocals, as well as frequent use of hurdy-gurdy. Rambunctious rhythms and refrains abound (“Dungeon Metal Punks Besieging Digital Castles,” “Warrior Jar,” “In the Poison Swamp”). The record maintains this rough and ready tone throughout: while there is a subtly different flair to individual tracks, there’s not a lot to actually distinguish them. Opener “Don’t Go Hollow, You Have Steel,”3, showcases everything you will hear for the rest of the record, with the exception of vocals, which here are restricted to the occasional snarled “eaaaagh!” The low-fi production which brings the fuzz and distortion, and that faraway washy quality to the vocals, contributes to the album’s coarseness and the sense of a gutsy spirit. But it equally brings the above uniformity into the realm of the problematic, as well as generating some problems of its own.

Rawness itself is not the issue, it’s how this rawness negatively affects Fell Omen’s compositions. Good raw black metal is a biting assault that can be beautiful or brutal. But in the case of Invaded by a Dark Spirit, the grittiness makes everything bland or bothersome. Hurdy-gurdy, sitting right at the front of the mix, wailing its refrain through the cellophane wrapping of the master, like a fucking kazoo, is jarring in a way I had not experienced before. And it is used a lot. That being said, the actual guitar is also prone to flights of wobbly fancy that imitate the hurdy-gurdy’s mannerisms in a way that blurs the line between them. This guitar sound could be cool, and in fact sometimes actually is (“Dungeon Metal…,” “In the Poison Swamp”), but the milquetoast package it comes in saps that coolness away. Programmed and acoustic drums alike sound akin to a stock keyboard ‘drum’ noise and are thus indistinguishable. Pointlessly brief flashes of synth get thrown in for no identifiable reason other than a whim (“Dungeon Metal…,” “Forlorn Knights and Strange Flasks”, tricking the listener into thinking that something interesting might be about to happen. Even setting aside particular noises that might be personal triggers, the songs are boring: monotonous in their vaguely repetitious way and stultified by the veil of grime.

While there are some admittedly catchy grooves sprinkled around Invaded by a Dark Spirit, the above problems block proper enjoyment of them. “In the Poison Swamp” is the closest thing to a “banger” with its infectious rhythms and well-timed “rawwrr”s working well off of the bendy guitar lines. It’s a shame it comes last. Others (“Don’t Go Hollow…,” “Warrior Jar”) can get your head bobbing well enough, and if you strain your ears just right, the whining melodies (hurdy-gurdy or otherwise) sound almost gnarly. Yet nothing is gripping; nothing is sufficiently slick, raw, or savage enough to capitalize on the low-fi sound and make this the rollicking riot it could so easily have been. Rather, it all feels anodyne, distant, and placid.

For an album that only lasts around 20 minutes, Invaded by a Fell Spirit is a drag to get through; unless, that is, you just ignore it, which is relatively easy to do. Fell Omen can craft some fun grooves, and there is some cool stuff going on with the guitar distortion and hurdy-gurdy, but these are superseded by the monotony and paradoxical blandness of it all. You can have a good time with selected tracks, but it doesn’t diminish the fact that Invaded by a Dark Spirit is nothing like the boisterous, epic tale it pretends to be.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: True Cult Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 14th, 2025

#20 #2025 #BlackMetal #Crust #CrustPunk #DungeonSynth #Feb25 #FellOmen #GreekMetal #Immortal #InvadedByADarkSpirit #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #TrueCultRecords #Wormwitch

New Artist announced for Ragnarök Festival 2025: 🔥 Wormwitch 🔥

🎶 Listen to the current LineUp on YouTube and Spotify: https://fyrefestivals.co
🎟️ Get your Tickets now: https://prf.hn/l/EJnYMdO

#Ragnark_Festival_2025 #Wormwitch #fyre_festivals #livemusic #youtube #spotify #music #musicfestivals #playlist #tickets #announcement

Winterfylleth announce winter dates

British black metal pioneers Winterfylleth are set to embark on a UK headline tour this November, celebrating the release of their highly anticipated album, The Imperious Horizon. Joining them will be Canada's Wormwitch alongside innovative Norwegian progressive black metallers Bizarrekult.

Tickets go on sa

https://www.moshville.co.uk/news/tours/2024/09/winterfylleth-announce-winter-dates/

#ToursLiveDates #Bizarrekult #Winterfylleth #Wormwitch

Wormwitch – Wormwitch Review

By Felagund

I have a complicated relationship with Wormwitch. On one hand, I was blown away by their sophomore effort Heaven That Dwells Within. I still spin it five years on and I routinely recommend it to anyone flirting with the melodic black metal or black n’ roll subgenres. On the other, I was generally let down by their follow-up Wolf Hex, which I had the good fortune to review. While I ultimately gave it a 3.0, I haven’t revisited the album much since then, and I still view it as a significant step down from their previous effort. Now here I sit, cradling these frigid Canadians’ latest album (which actually dropped back in July) in my loving arms, hoping beyond hope that this self-titled bundle of joy rights Wolf Hex’s well-intentioned wrongs and signals a return to form. As an AMG reviewer, we’re taught to live in hope, die in despair, and write the damn review already. So enough sharing what I want this record to be; is it good or what?

Well, it’s certainly not what I had hoped for. Wormwitch proved on Heaven That Dwells Within that they have the ability, both as players and songwriters, to deliver high-quality melodic black metal that remains memorable without overstaying its welcome; that incorporates elements of death metal, speed metal, crust, hard rock, and even folk without ever losing its essential, blackened edge; that weaves moving, melodic passages in-between ice-caked sheets of snarling brutality. And while Wolf Hex lacked much of the immediacy found on HTDW, it was still clear that Wormwitch were able to keep their creative spark alive, if somewhat dimmed. On Wormwitch, though, it sounds as if that once impressive flame is guttering, and threatening to go out entirely.

Sometimes this brand of all-encompassing criticism takes a few listens before it fully forms in your mind. But on Wormwitch, the problems are evident from the very first track. “Fugitive Serpent” is loud, blackened bombast revealing an utterly forgettable opener. Follow up tune “Envenomed” could have easily been titled “Fugitive Serpent 2,” doubling down as it does on unrelenting walls-of-sound, augmented vox buried too low in the mix, and a seeming disinterest in lingering too long on any passage, moment or interlude that runs the risk of holding the listener’s attention. As the album expands, so do these issues. Fourth track “Inner War” offers a bit more variety, including an attention-grabbing acoustic intro and a head-bobbing black n’ roll riff near the conclusion that helps bookend yet another forgettable heap of black metal bluster. Back half cuts like “Godmaegen” may boast an engaging, moody interlude between grungy guitar and wheezing bass, “Salamander” may deliver the sparse melancholy that Wormwitch used to such great effect on HTDW, and penultimate tune “Bright and Poisonous” might be where the band decided to toss many of their good ideas, but none of these brief moments are enough to save this album from what it truly is.

Which is what, exactly? To this lowly reviewer, Wormwitch’s self-titled fourth album is less a cohesive work and more a series of brickwalled black metal tropes, loosely held together by flickering, fleeting moments of inspiration. And much like a creaking discount Ferris wheel, this clunker threatens to collapse under the weight of its own hubris. In many ways, Wormwitch feels like the product of a band that is actively devolving before our eyes. While their second album is a mature, memorable slice of genre-hopping ferocity that thoughtfully balances mood, atmosphere and heaviness, their fourth outing is almost the polar opposite, dispensing with nuance in favor of regurgitated second-wave worship. Gone is the finely-tuned songwriting, replaced instead with an “all gas, no brakes” approach you’d expect from a group of untested upstarts, not musicians almost a decade into their career.

After taking such a long break from my reviewing duties, this isn’t the piece I’d hoped to produce upon my return. I want to like what Wormwitch does because I so loved what they’ve done in the past. So perhaps this is simply a case of unfair expectations. But I don’t think so; what appeared to be a bug on Wolf Hex appears to be a feature on Wormwitch, and that’s the unfortunate reality. The promo materials accompanying the album proclaims that this is “a statement of a band coming into its own,” and while I can’t fault musicians for seeking to develop their sound, I can certainly fault the result. Wormwich, it would appear I hardly knew ye.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Profound Lore Records
Websites: wormwitch.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/wormwitchofficial
Releases Worldwide: July 26th, 2024

#20 #2024 #BlackMetal #BlackNRoll #CanadianMetal #Crust #July24 #MelodicBlackMetal #ProfoundLore #Review #Reviews #Wormwitch

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#BLABBERMOUTH
Wormwitch
A persistent, maverick menace amid a crowded black metal marketplace, WORMWITCH have been one of the most convincingly grim and violent bands of the last decade.

https://blabbermouth.net/reviews/wormwitch

#WORMWITCH #BlackMetal