WORMSAND ~ YOU, THE KING ....review

There is a high probability that many of you out there may not be familiar with French sludge/stoner/psych trio Wormsand and that would be understandable as before the release of the album we are reviewing today Wormsand had only released two previous recordings, the 2019 self-titled EP "Wormsand" and the 2021 debut full length album "Shapeless Mess". Hopefully the release of new album "You, The King" (Mr. Red Sound Records) will see the band, Julien Coppo (guitars/vocals); Clément Mozzone (bass/synths/vocals) and Tom Valstar (drums/percussions/vocals), garner the sort of international acceptance we at Desert Psychlist believe their music richly deserves.

Opening song "Daydream" begins with a circular feeling guitar motif routinely interrupted by bursts of caustic drums and bass with those bursts soon transitioning from being an interruption to becoming a constant. The vocals that accompany what has now become a throbbing stoner-doom(ish) groove are clean melodic and easy on the ear but, thanks to them being bolstered by occasional edgy and harsh backing harmonies, they retain a darkness well in keeping with the weighty dynamics of the music that surrounds them. "Digging Deep" follows and sees Wormsand's vocalists trading clean and harsh tones over a backdrop of grainy gritty sludge metal that is taken to another level by some surprisingly clear and concise lead guitar work. Title track "You, The King" finds Wormsand swapping back and forth between passages of textured and ambient post/prog-metal and crushingly heavy sludge with a mix of vocals that match both disciplines while "Black Heaven" concentrates mainly on the sludge side of things despite being fronted by a vocal melody that would not sound too out of place on mainstream rock radio. "Drown" follows a similar path to its predecessor only this time with the addition of some Alice In Chains like slurriness in its guitar attack. "The Crown" serves as a brief instrumental eye in storm and nicely sets the scene for the atmospheric "The Final Dive" that follows, a stunning torch-like tome that musically mixes aspects of the blues with elements that, to this listener, are reminiscent of "Pornography" era The Cure and also boasts superb croon-like vocal interplay. Final number "To Die Alone" sees Wormsand bowing out in style, the band combining prog, psych and post metal dynamics with elements of sludge and grunge to give what has been a truly magnificent album a truly magnificent finale.   

The songs that inhabit Wormsand's new album "You, The King" possess a complexity of structure and arrangement that we usually only associate with progressive rock and metal yet strangely you will find no tags or descriptions referring to them as being such. Sludge and grunge are the two genres that are most often bandied about when discussing Wormsand's music and although there are strong elements of both to be found in what Wormsand bring to the table it is, for us, those progressive aspects of their sound that take "You, The King" from being just another collection of swaggering riffs and blustering rhythms to being something very special indeed. 

Check it out ..

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