REVIEW: WORMROT 'DIRGE' (EARACHE)

This, for all the slight of hand designed to lead you to believe the contrary, is perhaps the first original grindcore album to come from Earache, the label whose original input helped define the genre, since, as loathesome as it is to assign them this much credit, The Berzeker. With two posthumous releases to pave the way, one from the late Narcosis and one from hyped Texans Insect Warfare, cynics within the scene are fixing their gazes squarely on Singapore's hard-touring, three-piece noisebastards Wormrot (whose 2009 album 'Abuse' was reissued by Earache with lots of bonus bells and whistles) for the first great grind release from the label since the mid-'90s, and perhaps even a return to form as far as the crusty old guard in their machine boiled 'Diatribes' longsleeves are concerned.

Haters lower your hate sticks, Wormrot haven't let us down – 'Dirge's glorious monochrome pen and ink cover art of a rotting face in staggering detail is a statement of the contents' destructive capability. Pitched somewhere between the tightly wound bludgeoning of PLF and Insect Warfare – combining classic d-beat crust/grind song structure with the hyperfast, peddle-pounding pace and thick, pit-destroying grooves of powerviolence – and even that careening, unchained chaos of the absolutely maniacal Unholy Grave. Despite occasional, brief lapses into 'Harmony Corruption'-style mid-tempo deathgrind passages, 'Dirge' is breathless and unrelenting, and at only eighteen minutes long, finishes just before you have a massive heart attack.