Band:	Wormlust
Album:	The Feral Wisdom
Style:	Ambient black metal
Release date:	April 15, 2013
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. Sex Augu, Tólf Stjörnur
02. Djöflasýra
03. Á Altari Meistarans
04. Iður Úti

It seems as though the Northern Europeans have developed a strange taste for popping a few acid tabs before getting their kvlt and corpse paint on as of late. The UK's A Forest Of Stars, the likes of Finns Oranssi Pazuzu, Candy Cane, and Verge? and now we have a one man contribution to this growing (although still minor) psychedelic trend within black metal: Iceland's Wormlust, the creative vision of one H.V. Lyngdal (keep your panties on boys and girls, that's H.V. Lyngdal, not H.P. Lovecraft).

At first glance, H.V.'s 2013 debut, The Feral Wisdom appears to be a bit brief, as there are only 4 tracks to it. But if you know your black metal, you know that a low track number on an album generally = long tracks with either a lot of experimentation or a lot of composition techniques to take in, which is exactly the case here. The best band to compare Wormlust would probably be Oranssi Pazuzu, as the two are quite alike in overall formula: the harshness typical of black metal interspersed with a deeply hypnotic guitar tone and other ambient elements so darkly hallucinogenic and haunting that they could've only come from somewhere beyond the Milky Way Galaxy.

The difference between the two, however, is that H.V. is a lot less aggressive with the overall formula of Wormlust's delivery. Despite the br00t4l black metal sound that we all know and love being there, H.V. seems to be a lot more focused on navigating black holes and elliptical galaxies than getting his trve kvlt on. Think of it like this: it's a lot more of a psychedelic metal album with a bit of extreme metal techniques thrown in than a rough-cut black metal album with a few spacey ambient sounds here and there. The two harshest tracks on the album, the opener "Sex augu, tólf stjörnur" and the closer "Iður úti," still are somewhat overshadowed by the psychedelic elements in the background, and there are many brief moments in the two where H.V. stops his shrieking and guitar blazing for a second to add in little ambient sprinkles. The other two tracks, "Djöflasýra" and "Á altari meistarans," meanwhile, really get into H.V.'s creative vision, and are, in essence, what The Feral Wisdom is truly all about: in H.V.'s words, "projecting astral body horrors to the cosmos from Iceland."

Although being dominated mostly by its spacey side, The Feral Wisdom still has enough black metal elements within it to please the more orthodox listener, so people both looking for something harsh and something more experimental will likely be pleased with it. The first contribution to this small, mescaline-infused black metal style from a one man band is an excellent one indeed. And aren't you kiddies thankful that you get to stream it for free now before it comes out officially in April? I know I am. Being quite the fan of psychedelic music myself, I really see this trend within black metal going further if a few more bands emerge to push its limits, and if that does happen, psychedelic black metal could very well end up becoming a regional scene in Europe (likely within Finland), as have all the French avante-garde bands. Only time will tell, I suppose. But if anything, for the record I called this prediction first

Listen at Bandcamp