Album Review: WVRM - Colony Collapse
Reviewed by Tim Finch
Hailing from South Carolina, WVRM claim to be the states only grind band. It’s a bold claim, but being situated right in bible belt territory and not exactly a hot bed of extreme music, it’s a claim that could well be true.
The band come from and are proud to claim their working class roots, they’ve seen and experienced first hand the struggles people in this class of society have been through and still go through, especially in America’s southern states. These themes run through their song writing. ‘Colony Collapse’, the bands latest album for Prosthetic Records, explored these themes in detail; the psychological and physical meaning of being working class, the lineage of their ancestral progress, and what it means to participate in a community that lacks upward momentum. In some ways they are not so different from their UK counterparts, Napalm Death. Politically themed lyrical content delivered aggressively through the medium of grind.
Containing fourteen songs, ‘Colony Collapse’ doesn’t quite make the half hour mark in length. This album is a brutal portrayal of South Carolinan life delivered with a sledge hammer of brutality.
From the opening bars of ‘Walled Slum City’ you know how this album will progress. Screeching feedback is following by the most aggressive riff’s you will hear this year. Song after song pummelling the listeners ear drums as they batter your conscience with their message. Mind you, it’s not all out and out brutality; ‘Tank Reaper’ draws on influences from the southern states sludge culture, it’s slower in pace and the dark doomy drawl oozes through the prevailing grind.
In ‘Colony Collapse’ WVRM have given their own State of The Union Address, telling it how it is, all layered within the aggression of their music. If you are looking for a new slab of grind to fill your weeks of isolation, look no further!
WVRM release ‘Colony Collapse’ via Prosthetic Records on April 3rd.
