by Jonathan Mottola (@screamo_enjoyer)
Retaliation, Vermin Womb’s follow-up to 2016’s Decline turned out to be one of the heaviest releases of 2022. Fans of the band who haven’t heard this release yet will be ecstatic to find this to be not only some of the band’s most unrelenting material, but among of the most chaotic and brutal of last year. With that being said, if you are a fan of death metal or grindcore (or deathgrind) and you still haven’t checked out this band, you are in for a real treat.
Vermin Womb are a Denver based band composed of members of legendary sludge metal band, Primitive Man, as well as Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, and if those bands aren’t familiar to you, I first want to say “where have you been?,” but also “get ready,” because Vermin Womb has the energy and ferocity of all of these bands cranked up to ten. They pack an incredibly impressive amount of extreme genres into such a short record, and unrelenting heaviness isn’t the only thing they have going for them, either. While Vermin Womb is commonly referred to as a grindcore band, it becomes apparent quickly on this record that there is so much more that is encapsulated within that broad label. Tracks like “Sad Clown” have a crusty, war-metal-like ferocity to them, while songs like “Gamnique (Cold World)” show a more melodic, rhythmic, blackened-death side of the band, reminiscent of the more melodic sound on Decline and the work of other bands such as Infernal Coil. The feel of more melodic songs like these within a release as brutal as this makes for an atmosphere that is gloomy, bleak, and devastating. This is all to say that while their 2016 release was lightning-fast and blast-beat heavy, this record shows the band at their most chaotic, their most brutal, and their most refined while still leaving room for the blackened, crusty, atmospheric gloom that their previous material shrouded us with over the past few years.
The production is clean, but the ferocity of the material in conjunction with such crisp production makes for an absolutely jarring and brutal listen. Noise track “Ambulance” and the feedback and squelching vocals at the end of certain songs are the only gasp of air that the listener is given from the relentless brutality of this release until the very last second. There is absolutely no time wasted, there are absolutely no tracks that feel weaker than any others, and the whole thing is so unabating yet seamless and cohesive that it demands to be listened to in one sitting. The sheer weight and quality is something to behold, and something that Vermin Womb has been consistent with and made themselves known for over the past few years. In short, Vermin Womb stole the show with one of the heaviest records of last year, and if you haven’t heard it yet, you should do yourself a favor and check it out before they release something else and leave you in the dust.