(written by Islander)
Time flies when you’re having fun. It still flies when life looks like sheer hell, with nothing but more hell to come and no way of stopping the misery.
More than two years have flown by since we last commented about the music of the Florida-based death/doom band Wharflurch. The occasion then was a compilation forthrightly named Shittier/Slimier, which collected previously unreleased Wharflurch demos that showcased the more experimental and psychedelic side of the project. Commenting on just one song from it, we wrote:
“It’s more impressive than you might expect based upon the new album’s name. Sure, it’s foul and gross, with monstrous reverb-ed vocals, but also brutish and crazed, capable of triggering muscle reflexes and of spawning ghoulish visions. When the band slow down, that’s when you really feel like you’re being dragged by your hair into a stinking cesspool, and the feverish lead-guitar sounds like it’s gleefully reveling in your agony.”
Time has flown, and now we come back to Wharflurch, expecting both more fun and more hell.
The occasion for the return is the impending release by a trio of respected labels of the band’s second album. Titled Mycodeath and Rebirth in the Outer Clusters, it’s a concept album that’s a sequel to the band’s 2021 debut full-length, Psychedelic Realms ov Hell, one that places “our ‘hero’ at the precipice of an incredible journey to the furthest regions of our universe, where the ubiquitous Mycolords reveal the true plan for their experimentation on Planet Earth, how indeed this is a universe-wide phenomena, and how he fits into their grand scheme.”
And so now we re-enter the universe imagined by the Wharflurch duo of John Mamo and Myk Colby, a cosmos “secretly ruled by puppet-master mushroom entities who covertly inoculate virile planets with their own spore-kind to foster sentient life as they see fit.”
To continue quoting the vivid press materials we’ve received, the band trace the story through “dismal doom-death with flashes of ignorance and brilliance interspersed within the cornucopia of riffs and textures,” volleying “between chunky, catchy, plodding and tricky, obtuse, beautiful.”
You can test these claims for yourselves by listening to a song from the album we’re presenting today — “Headless God” (which features guest vocals from Garrett Alvarado of Maul).
Here, Wharflurch begin the proceedings with a spacey but menacing sonic collage. Synths eerily shimmer, but beneath them is a dim, dismal, and corrosive churn. The duo then begin a segue with the haunting ring of bell-like tones, heavily slugging low frequencies, and rattling beats — a segue that leads into a sudden convulsion of hyper-speed percussion, viciously blistering riffage, and a ghastly scream that goes on and on.
The song is packed with changing experiences, and so the riffing begins to feverishly jolt; the drums go off like automatic weaponry; and monstrous growls join in with those maniacal screams. The low end also brutishly heaves as string tortures create shrill squeals. As the pace slows further, the music becomes a lurching, hulking beast, but a beast overlaid with ethereal emanations that slowly ring and riotously squirm.
The song is an elaborate shape-shifter, but as the band cycle through its various motifs, changing the tempos, the tones, and the moods as they go, it takes root in the head (or infests it). It holds together, creating a strange, scary, and mind-bending hallucination, but one that’s hard to let go of. Just this one song merits all those adjectives quoted above about the album as a whole — the music is chunky, catchy, plodding, tricky, obtuse, and beautiful.
WHARFLURCH is:
Guitar / Synth / Vocals – Myk Colby
Drums / Vocals – John Mamo
MORE CREDITS (quoting the PR materials):
“The conceptual artwork was rendered by none other than Claw//Eight, the morbid pensmith responsible for many of WHARFLURCH’s visual offerings over the years, who indeed has even been in the van on tour with the band, which earns him honorary membership as the band’s Visionary. His artistic depictions of psychedelic fright and transformation are absolutely intrinsic to the concept and realization of this album’s continuation of the story.”
“Vocal duties are shared between Mamo and Myk, with guest appearances by Garrett Alvarado (frontman extraordinaire from Midwest death-dealers Maul) on vocals as the voice of the “Sporelords,” and Jamie Stewart (throat shredder for The Abscence, Party Time, and Hot Graves) doing narratives and guest vocals on quite a few songs. Thus, the narrative takes on a new dimension, with different voices playing different parts to this uncanny story.”
RELEASE INFO
The album will be released on September 25th by three labels: Personal Records, Gurgling Gore, and Dawnbreed Records will all be releasing the vinyl LP version; the CD version will be shared by Personal and Dawnbreed; and the tape version will be handled exclusively by Gurgling Gore.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.personal-records.com
https://www.gurglinggore.com
https://www.dawnbreed.com
WHARFLURCH:
https://wharflurch.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/wharflurch/