Portugal's Wømb is one of those black metal bands with a discography befitting their raw, inhumane style. By which I mean, that they basically only release demos, and when they're not releasing demos, they're doing splits. They released one EP two years ago, realized it was a mistake, and have now made up for their error in judgment by releasing another demo. It's good to recognize where your strengths lie and to play to them.
Here, The World Falls... is Wømb's third demo. Reaching for an analogy, I'd say it sounds like Watain, if they burned all of their possessions, faked their deaths, relocated to a cave in the woods, and survived the following year by eating nothing but sickly squirrels and poisoned berries. Upon returning to civilization after thirteen months of absentia, I would then imagine that they immediately entered the studio and cut an album. Whatever you would imagine the album Watain would make after that journey would sound like, that is what Here, The World Falls... actually sounds like. This is a very tortured way of saying that Wømb's latest release sounds like an album made by some people at the very limits of human sanity, who had become very accustomed to life on the teetering edge of barbarism. Wømb know how to translate their madness into musick, a fact they prove with every hissing snare fill, saliva leaking shriek, and every abrasive and obtusely bent groove, each so jagged that you can feel them lacerating your skin like the straight-razor of a drunk, stroppless, barber, on a mission from hell to give you a shave so close you'll need to see a surgeon about stitches afterward.
I really like the demo style releases for Wømb, because I believe it sets the right expectations for their sound. The unproduced quality of their music lends their compositions a power they wouldn't otherwise have. The confines of their recording are not enough to contain the vicious howl of their vocals or the grandeur and symphonic ambitions of their tremolo picking (particularly on "Kalika"). These sonic fetters give Wømb restraints that they can bay against, creating the impression of active rebellion against the confines of their physical environment, and even their own bodies, as if they are constantly on the verge of becoming too large for the room in a sort of lycanthropic transformation. The tension conveyed by these compositions is compelling and allows Wømb to achieve an aesthetic quality liminal abhorrence that is both cannily shrewd and indisputable violent.
Get a copy of Wømb's Here, The World Falls... on cassette via Purodium Rekords.
