Incredibly unprofessional photo courtesy my iPhone and PBR.

Rarely have I felt as close to a room full of mostly strangers as I did at Wormrot‘s first show of their U.S. tour this past Sunday evening at the Bowery Electric. As you’ve probably heard, the band missed the first few dates of the tour due to visa issues, and almost didn’t make it to the States at all; once it became clear that they were going to make it across the ocean, the promoters of this bill — which also included Evoken and Wizardy, both of whom are worth checking out if you’ve yet to do so — were able to slide Wormrot in at the last minute. This combination of “Awesome Cinderella story band from Singapore almost didn’t make it and then did and scheduled this show at literally the last possible moment” made the entire thing feel that much more special, and the fans in attendance behaved accordingly.

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Holy crap, was that awesome Faith No More show really a week ago already? I think I may be suffering from post-FNM depression. We’re seeing Maiden on Monday night, and I’m more excited to hang out with my friends than to see Bruce, Steve and the gang. I just wanna go see FNM again… is that so wrong???

Luckily, there’s plenty of stuff going on in the metal world to keep me distracted from dreams of Mike, Mike, Billy, Roddy and Jon. For instance:

• Bulb from Periphery got his groove back, and The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley consulted with the dudes from Aquarius Records as he continued his search for the perfect Taco Riff.
• We debuted new music from Asher.
• Sergeant D spoke to Miss May I’s Ryan Neff and Sammy O’Hagar chatted with Rasyid from Wormrot.
• We checked out new releases from Soilwork, Allegaeon, and Sister Sin.
• The possibility of new Beavis and Butt-Head episodes gave us a collective boner.
• The hippies in Phish got aggressive and covered Rage Against the Machine.
• We looked at a plethora of terrifically terrible music videos, and Vince wondered if the medium was even a relevant tool for promotion anymore.
• Vince also took time out of his busy schedule to find me a new woman. Yowza!

Next week we’ll have a song debut from our fellow stoner nerds, an interview with a power violence band, and some other shit. Plus, Question of the Week will finally return. ‘Til then… enjoy your weekend!

-AR

To call Wormrot’s killer debut, Abuse, a splash of cold water to the face in the midst of a growingly samey genre wouldn’t be giving it enough credit: it’s like being woken from a nap by a beating from a claw hammer. It pleased newbies and purists alike: filthy, Repulsion-style grind with a rawness and energy that could only be provided by guys who genuinely loved the stuff. The fact that Earache scooped them up off an mp3 blog and introduced the rest of the world to them is the sort of Cinderella story that overshadows how plain-and-simple great they are. In theory, the fact that they so ably school Western world grindsters while calling Singapore home illustrates how the internet has made the globe a much smaller place, that distance is only physical for the most part now, and that technology has brought us and our love of metal together. In fact, shut up, Abuse is just a really, really, really, really very good grindcore album, and everything else is just background noise.

Guitarist Rasyid is a pretty big part of the band’s overall effectiveness. His barbed, punk-infused grind riffs cut right to the center of any grindcore-sympathetic metalhead: they have substance as well as speed. He maintains the necessary skill behind what sounds like a dervish of barely reined-in chaos. In an email interview with MetalSucks, Rasyid discusses Wormrot’s beginnings and rise to prominence, their decision to cover a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, and how Singapore is a “country of poseurs.”

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