Baltimore's Wormhole have hit the next level on their new album, Almost Human, out Friday, September 22 via Season of Mist. Find a full album stream below.
When you invent your own genre, you can make the rules, and in space, no one can correct your math. If Wormhole’s excellent The Weakest Among Us was 50% tech death and 50% slamming brutal death metal, their Season of Mist debut is a veritable leveling up of the Baltimore-based act’s trademark “tech slam.” It’s the kind of record that can scramble your brain and give your neck a nice chiropractic workout; Almost Human feels like the future of extreme metal, dropped down from either outer space or delivered by Nintendo cartridge (more on that later).
So, what the hell exactly is “tech slam?” Well, the gleefully amorphous and unholy term comes from an ethos that guitarists Sanil “Noni” Kumar and Sanjay Kumar discovered and perfected over (probably) thousands of hours of Metroid and Doom games, as well as, you know, actual musical mastery. Almost Human, out September 22, 2023, is more powerful, more agile, and more confounding for pie-chart-enthusiasts than anything else that came before it. The sequel is always bigger, darker, and in this case, covered in much more pixelated space horror viscera. My Wormholio calculator puts their sound at 91% tech and 89% slam, with an increase in awesome stats somewhere in the 420% range. There’s also a clear emphasis on amplifying their dissonant death influence, the kind of eerie melodies that feel like being stomped on by Samus.
There’s a clear balance to everything on Almost Human: the songs are more adventurous while also being instantly memorable. No two songs sound alike, and that diversity in songcraft (level design?) sees Wormhole pushing and pulling along their tech and slam dials to figure out what’s best for the song; spoiler, it’s always riffs. What also becomes evident after repeated listens is how carefully the Kumar brothers understand a sense of place, humor, and a consistent vibe. This is still the same band that’s known for throwing on Saturday morning cartoons, and Almost Human continues to hammer home that Wormhole the musical entity is deadly serious, but the guys that make tech slam are not stoic creatures. There’s a warmth and sense of joy when chatting with them that only gets brighter when you ask their favorite Metroid game (that’s a question for a live show). So, what is this vibe they are chasing? Sanjay shares:
“The tech slam imagery is based on Metroid lore, Doom lore, and we haven't written a song about it yet, but Alien as well. Those three things are brutal sci-fi universes, so we're trying to embody that sound. The slam riffs, you can connect the brutal killing of stuff with the brutal chunky riffs; that's been a match that's existed since the nineties. So that's the slam part, and then the tech part was harder to fit that vibe, so we kind of do it differently. I lean into very dissonance-vibe stuff, like Artificial Brain and Dysrhythmia. I think disso-death and heavy, they aren't usually paired together, even though they should be.”
“And then as far as chasing the vibe,” Noni adds, “I kind of go about it two ways. With the Metroid soundtrack or universe, that vibe, there's some dark and gloomy atmosphere, but there's a lot of pretty imagery as well. We wanted to find a way to match that very pretty, kind of out-there sound cohesively in songs with a very aggressive and guttural approach.”
Like another famous sci-fi horror masterpiece of a different media, Wormhole’s shifting, amorphous style is perfectly suited to blend in and amaze just about any fan of heavy music. That’s The Thing: they can pull off whatever they want, but it’s always boiled down to that tech slam vibe. Do you like tech, melody, breakdowns, atmosphere, or dissonance? Tech slam can fill whatever void you seek.
If previous albums were early generation, lower-resolution visions of tech slam, Almost Human is the 4K reboot, where you can see every pixel of terror and awe. Wormhole are absolutely ready for their closeup. Prepare your worms and your holes, tech slam is here to stay.
Pre-order the new album here, pre-save here.
Tracklisting:
"System Erase"
"Elysiism"
"Spine Shatter High-Velocity Impact"
"Data Fortress Orbital Stationary"
"Delta Labs"
"Almost Human"
"Bleeding Teeth Fungus"
"The Grand Oscillation"
Album stream:
Lineup:
Julian Kersey: vocals
Sanil Kumar: guitar
Sanjay Kumar: guitar
Basil Chiasson: bass
Matt Tillett: drums
(Photo - Scott Kinkade)
