I picked up the green vinyl version of ‘Pillars of Eternal Dusk’ at a Worm Altar show in (East Coast) Portland, nine days ahead of its October 16 drop. The placid curse of spinning this vinyl, with the optional unsolicited aural-receptive participation of square neighbors, situates us within a sociosonic dwelling hollowed to resolve compulsions toward cavernous Death/Doom, burial-weight old-school Death Metal, and those underground forms where atmosphere, decay, and bodily pressure become geology.
‘Pillars of Eternal Dusk’ assures us sonically, as the eventuality of time shall assure us bodily, that we are at home underground. Worm Altar bring contemporary texture to cavernous old-school Death/Doom: Sovereign, slow-burning riffing, spacious yet disciplined production, guttural monolithic vocals and a low-end weight that recalls Mortiferum, Krypts and Incantation, with the grave patience of Disembowelment. The enclosure is cavernous without becoming cacophonous, broad without drifting into the void of abstraction. To the aching ear, clarity allows each impact its own recoil and ruefulness.
Riffs endure like a dreadful march, sometimes carrying the burial weight of Coffins or Winter; flourishes and stops punctuate the procession like monuments and outcrops, destabilizing insomuch as they arrive as inevitable. The Doom experience is never ponderous, no mind to spin monotonous. Sharper old-school Death Metal motion periodically breaches the casket’s crawl, Morbid Angel muscle circa ‘Covenant’ (their greatest), inlaid sweeps of Swedish rot-rhythm (in structure, not in tone), without upending the band’s own architecture, unfolding its collected contours of pace and evocation. ‘Eternal Dusk’ is a soundtrack to the advance visitation of the cemetery soil gathering somewhere beyond the scatter of horizons. It is sound to inhabit.
Vocals remain in the register of death-as-foundational. Not destiny approaching, but decay long underway: Strains of calm demoniac diction descending, adhering, fading without faltering. Guitars texture long saws of dull flame, like inscrutable pseudo-parallel horizons dusting our descent to death’s cold vengeance. The trap kit settles an adamant Doom dominion, its fills and stops punctuating the procession even as it frames its heights and footprint. Blast-beat passages settle and scatter calculated climbs—frost-clear, synchronized—narrative peak, seizure of the ensemble, bodily suspension in controlled convulsion—their slow-burned rhythms transiguring rather than simply changing gears. The bass shapes all, bears all beneath even this foundation: clean enough to guide untangled, dust-coated rather than polished, packed beneath the root-sawing strata, its presence like clay under stone and desiccated forests, the load-bearing mantle, granting the enclosure weight from below.
Fans of Doom encounter dry cold production disturbed by moss tendrils dragging shadows through mycelial dust; inhabit pseudo-ethereal echoes about our grave enclosure; carry forward a visage unacquainted with sanctuary or sky. Spectres of mercy, difference and prospect lie long pallid, encased beneath an impassive film of dull ashen crystal, buried in the shade of the depths. I could infer the procession of these songs as an edification ritual of Lovecraftian consequence.
We are all worm altars. These pillars defy origin, flout destiny, stand without swaying. In eternal dusk, even the singularity of darkness is unattainable.
Our burial awaits, belongs, endures.
