Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Worm - Foreverglade (2021)

On my occasional forays into death/doom I often get bored if I am honest; certainly, in later years when it has been done to death (pun intended) and well-done death/doom seems a rarefied breed. As such, I approached Foreverglade with the kind of pensiveness reserved for opening Christmas presents from someone who usually just gives me cash.

Thankfully, Worm have managed to not only do real justice to the ethos of death/doom but have also added some unique elements that touch other points of the extreme metal spectrum also. In doing so they manage to make Foreverglade a success in terms of both design and content. It is at its very core a death/doom album still yet it has dashes of accessibility beyond just the fathomless repetition and smothering murk that coats everything.

For a start, this is one of the most sensible use of keys on a death/doom record I have ever heard. There is no sense of someone falling on the keys for dramatic effect when the atmosphere dictates we need to plunge down some dark(er) hole. Instead the gothic melodies they exude compliments the wider stratosphere, linking some catchy riffing with some excellent lead work or more melodious guitar work in general. It is the guitars that rule on this album as well, supported superbly by the thunderous drumming of L. Dusk and the ghastly and cavernous vocals of Fantomslaughter.

It is clear that these guys have come from a black metal background in their early years, and this is never more obvious in the vocal rasps that permeate the vast atmospherics that the more traditional death/doom sustains. What this does to the album is create a sense of cohesion of influence and styles across the forty-four-minute runtime; feeling like an album that encompasses the history of Worm as a unit whilst teasing us with more progressive tendencies here and there also. At times (Subaqueous Funeral) the album has an almost conceptual feel to it made more apparent by the maturity of the lead work and patient structure building that goes on.

For an album of such gargantuan heaviness it feels very short and concise and does not outstay its welcome by any means. Worm clearly have a lot to offer but are mature enough to restrain it in one of 2021’s more intriguing releases.