Goreworm careens through death metal stylings with precision and aplomb on their fiery sophomore Miasmic Solitude.
Release date: June 12, 2026 | Transcending Obscurity Records | Bandcamp | Instagram
I don’t think it’d be unfair to call Canada the technical death metal capital of the world. From the genre’s early days, the Northern nation has been packed to the gills with great tech-death. From genre legends like Cryptopsy and Martyr through more experimental bands like Gorguts (also legends, of course) and early Kataklysm, to more melodic twists like Quo Vadis and on to modern icons like Archspire or Beyond Creation, the Great White North has always treated their death metal with a little more flourish. The neat part is, if you’re willing to do a little digging, you can still find some oddly acrobatic maggots in that grave soil.
Case in point: Ontario’s Goreworm and their frenetic sophomore album Miasmic Solitude. Now I’ll admit, at first look I misjudged what kind of band Goreworm would be. That name just screams the sort of gross, murky death metal that has roots stretching right back to Autopsy. I do love that kind of material, and that stunning cover art of an arachnid stalking a desolate landscape got me interested. That simplicity, as you can guess, is not what Goreworm is about. Rather, Miasmic Solitude proves a whirlwind of death metal influences that forms into an oddly otherworldly tornado of brutality. The neoclassical sweeps and taps of technical death metal, the harmonies and tremolos of melodic death metal à la The Black Dahlia Murder and their ilk, as well as the crushing grooves and even the odd slam out of brutal death metal. Goreworm wields all of this and more, with a great sense of variety to boot.
The album opener “Conjuring” is a fairly inauspicious start, not quite launching into the band’s full capabilities. Riffs aplenty, and the odd bit of synth for flavor, but it isn’t until “Monuments to Murdering” that the guitars really kick into their dazzling dance of neoclassical elegance. “The Enthralling Grave” wound up a personal favorite of mine with the thrashy kick it adds, somehow building to a slam riff that hit subtly without grinding proceedings to a halt. “Orbweaver” lives up to its arachnid namesake in the absolute web of leads it conjures, leading into the complex passages of “Amor Vincit Omnia”.
It’s an absolutely dense album, awash in spidery guitars and bass and thundering drums. But unlike so much of technical death metal, which ends up just being way too much too fast, Goreworm knows when to change tack and take their sound in a different direction. “No Reprieve” and “Eve of Flagellation” feel a little more direct and up front than much of their predecessors, adding a bit of breathing room for listeners. Which is then swept clean in the wild winds of “Jarrell”, which does a marvelous job evoking the horrors of the tragic F5 tornado it references (a historical moment where Mother Nature felt less chaotic and more genuinely malevolent and angry) through its rapidly shifting tempos and rhythms. As someone who regularly watches YouTube tornado documentaries with my wife (and occasionally falls asleep to the same videos), I of course appreciated Goreworm‘s more idiosyncratic choice in topics.
I’d likewise make special note of the grandeur with which the instrumental “Strelly” arrives, feeling dramatic and haunting in its sheer fury and the blizzard of harmonized leads that wind through it before the closing title track wraps up the proceedings. Miasmic Solitude is a veritable feast of instrumental talent, not to mention a great variety of rasps and growls, and it’s a great credit to the band that they never quite reach that level of having too much flash (though they do lean on that border from time to time). I never felt like the songs were just launchpads for guitar solos interrupted by the odd mediocre breakdown, and Goreworm settled on a production style that adds just enough grit and dirt to keeps things from feeling too sterile and clinical.
I won’t act like the album wasn’t occasionally a taxing listen when I wasn’t in the mood for technicality, but Goreworm strikes a great balance across Miasmic Solitude that makes for an album that manages to be genuinely fun in addition to being deeply impressive. It’s technical death metal that remembers to be great death metal first, with wild technicality acting more as ornate, intricate decoration than as the whole point. Miasmic Solitude has the guts to win over more traditionalist death metal fans and the pizzazz to satisfy tech heads, and if you appreciate death metal of any variety, Goreworm is going to be well worth digging up.
