(We present DGR’s review of a new EP by Massachusetts-based Worm Shepherd which was released last month by Unique Leader Records.)
Sometimes a band will find themselves unwittingly serving a purpose beyond the basic enjoyment of music/listener exchange. Worm Shepherd are one such group, as their sort of alternating status between fully activated live act, in-home studio project, nebulous existence altogether has served a somewhat unintentional beacon on the wider evolutionary path of the deathcore genre as a whole.
Built out of constituent parts of various other deathcore groups based along the East Coast and couched in the current day bombast and spectacle of the symphonic and blackened absorbtion, Worm Shepherd have become a sort of guide to the genre as a wider whole – you could explode the band out into seperate guide stones and each one would walk you into a different path of recognizable artists. As these many influences converge, so too does Worm Shepherd reassemble itself.
It is not whether the band itself exists in some instances but the larger picture they paint, and in the case of Worm Shepherd they’ve been excellent as that sort of aforementioned snapshot of where the deathcore genre may be as a whole – especially in its current moment of trying new things again, as the influenced by the influenced by the influenced by the influenced by crowd find themselves facing diminishing returns.
Worm Shepherd’s new EP Dawn Of The Iconoclast is representative of some of this, as the group’s formula was built out of a distilled-down through psychotic chemistry approach to symphonic deathcore, yet slowed down to such a point that it seemed less like we were doing big roaring breakdowns for the sake of declaring just how immensely heavy something feels but because they were a group verging on stumbling into funeral doom territory and just couldn’t figure out how to make the macho hoody aesthetic work with it just yet.
Dawn Of The Iconoclast is the group’s first recorded work post a massive lineup shift in which the aforementioned dance from fully activated project to studio act and back took place, resulting in just a reassembled form constructed from new and returning musicians to the fray. Consisting of five songs for a beefy twenty-five minutes worth of music perfectly befitting to crush your latest weight lifting sets to, Dawn Of The Iconoclast represents both a doubling down on a current sound and a smattering of the shiny and new worming – forgive me – its way in around the edges.
The EP is marked by a sort of creative tectonic plate shifting for the band, with a decent part of the work resting heavily on sole tenured member Tre Purdue’s shoulders – including recruitment of a full band taking place somehow during this process. New vocalist, returning rhythm section, familiar-ish bassist, and new guitarist all placed together so that it seems like Worm Shepherd may be gearing up to take a swing at combat in the wider deathcore world – three albums and one EP in.
It has been interesting over the years that deathcore’s answer as a genre to acheive new heights of brutality has not been to go faster, aim lower, or add more and more bombast to the mix so that the overall sound is an overwhelming mass, but to actually slow down and strip things away. The heaviest moments, so to speak, in any paticular deathcore song these days come not from the band turning themselves into bulldozers but instead the times when instrumentation is minimalistic and sparse – the snare drum sounds off like a rifle shot via laptop assistance, one sparse guitar chug rings out, and the amount of words uttered across multiple measures could be counted on Tony Iommi’s fingertips.
It seems that the genre has found its heaviness in simplicity, like an architectural concrete brutalism turned musical. What could be heavier, it seems the genre is asking, than the sheer weight of a gigantic cube? The unspoken density of the thing laying in the spaces in between the actual notes, left to be filled by the imagination – which could conjure up imagery far more terrifying than anything the band could portray – and making someone want to headbang harder simply because the opportunity to do so happens so infrequently. You’re not hanging on note for note in some sort of neck-snapping thrash fest; things are suddenly, violently, and just as quickly silenced.
We’re discussing this in part because much of Dawn Of The Iconoclast is perforated by these moments. Worm Shepherd had already displayed a tendency toward these big “leviathan destroying the city”-esque songs on Ritual Hymns, The Sleeping Sun, and Hunger, with each one peeling back layer after layer from their In The Wake Ov Sol debut. They started out gigantic and overwhelming and have since stripped back more and more until you achieve what we have in multitudes on Dawn Of The Iconoclast, which are segments of percussive hammering left as the sole assaulting front. Synthesized symphonics fall back, guitars move in martial precision with the double-bass on offer, and the vocals are hashed out just as suddenly. Dawn Of The Iconoclast is peppered with segments like this and the rest of the time it is Worm Shepherd doing what they’re known for — symphonic work doing a lot of the melodic heavy lifting and a multi-pronged vocal attack layered over music that turns near apocalyptic.
Where this shines through the most is actually during the previously launched single “Whispers Of A Buried Land” – which will likely be the most “at home” Worm Shepherd feel since it is a gargantuan song with more layers than we’ve excavated out of a cliffside during your average archaelogical trek – and “Feast”, which serves as a fantastic synthesis of the band’s current artistic vision. Opener “The Omen” is no slouch either but is the newest “feeling” of the current Worm Shepherd incarnation, with a melodic line that seems to dance behind the machine-gun fire of the drum kit. You’ll note throughout the opening of the song the punchier moments that we’ve been alluding to throughout this write up. “The Omen” does good conceptual work in laying the foundation of the Dawn Of The Iconoclast EP and has a fun piano crash “blink and you’ll miss it” moment during its “you’ll see it coming from a mile off and be ashamed that it still kind of works on you” ultra-brutal breakdown segment.
We are well within the halls of the current symphonic deathcore movement during Dawn Of The Iconoclast’s twenty-five minutes and Worm Shepherd show themselves to be a good standard-bearer of the genre as a whole. As mentioned above, the group haven’t had the easiest time keeping things stable, and returning from two years of relative silence is a pretty impressive act of its own. Worm Shepherd tear their way through the checkpoints of the genre with ease within their latest offering, fusing the latest trends and inspirations that are ripping through the wider genre-mass like wildfire to their own symphonics-heavy take as a whole.
Dawn Of The Iconoclast works well as Worm Shepherd condensed, five songs of fearsome destruction, and silenced like flames being snuffed out by explosions. Previous EP The Sleeping Sun worked the same way and shows that maybe, just maybe, there might be some magic in not blowing the formula out into a much bigger musical balloon, lest all of this brutality take on the same routine as going to get the mail on a Tuesday evening. Dawn Of The Iconoclast is a solid entry for a band that has had to seemingly fight for every bit of ground it can gain and is a good starting point for Worm Shepherd’s latest relaunch.
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