Worm began as a solo black metal mission by one known only as Fantomslaughter. The debut demo, The Deep Dark Earth Underlies All, looks like a black metal tape, and sounds like one most of the time, but on their fifty-four minute demo, Worm was already showing signs of the band they would become in 2019. Their inherent ambition to move beyond the confines of their genre already blared evident on their first recording. Then, in 2016, we told you that the Florida swampland-based then-black metal band’s second demo Nights in Hell was one of the best of that year.

By the time of the release of their proper debut album, Evocation of the Black Marsh, in 2017, Worm had altered into some rare breed of American black doom death mutation. But lately, as “Abysmal Dimensions,” the first song to be teased from their new album revealed a month ago, Worm sound to have burrowed even deeper into their death/doom tendencies, and found their innermost bottom to be cold yet fertile, pitch black yet somehow iridescent therein. Across its eleven minutes, “Abysmal Dimensions” sounds like the South’s best kept secret may have executed another deeply rewarding and darkly sincere album that we can all go die in for a little bit once it’s out early next year on Iron Bonehead.

And that’s why we’re psyched to be hosting this track premiere from Worm’s mighty sophomore response, Gloomlord. The opening track, hand-picked by Decibel ourselves, this is “Putrefying Swamp Mists at Dusk.”

“It’s no surprise that Worm has always had it’s slow doomy moments, our last release was me trying to cram early Autopsy/Goatlord riffs in every song while maintaining that lo fi occultism,” reflects Fantomslaughter, via our recently resurrected email correspondence. “But when the idea of making a new album crossed my mind, I decided that I needed to make a complete descent into the impending gloom. At this time all that I was listening to was stuff like Thergothon/Skepticism/Disembowelment and it only made sense to try and take on the idea of making 100% Funeral Doom album from Worm’s perspective. Thus Gloomlord was born. I got the killer artwork from Yuri Kahan and just built a Lovecraftian world around it with Floridian swamp lore.

“I decided to start off the album with ‘Putrefying Swamp Mists at Dusk,’” continues Fantomslaughter, “because it was the last song that I wrote and recorded for the album. I felt like I had gotten a grasp of the Gloomlord concept and was really comfortable in that world. It sort of encompasses what’s to come in the whole album. Also I personally feel like I had my Abhorrence – ‘Caught In a Vortex’-moment with the intro of the song. I’ve always been trying to craft music around the feeling and imagery that I get from that track.”

“Putrefying Swamp Mists at Dusk”