Album Review: Worm Altar – Pillars of Eternal Dusk

Album Review: Worm Altar – Pillars of Eternal Dusk

Reviewed by Sam Jones

Here’s a name I’ve not encountered before: Worm Altar hailing out of Maine, United States, having formed only a few years ago and seem poised to show wider audiences what they’re made of. Releasing their first Demo in 2022 the band soon followed this up with their 2023 Astral Scourge EP, with another Demo last year. Since then the band have been diligently working in their first full length record as presented here: Pillars Of Eternal Dusk. Set for an October 16th release date and picked up by Gurgling Gore, Worm Altar are raring to unleash their putrid death metal attack upon the world.

Mood is everything, that’s why Worm Altar spend the first three minutes of their record establishing one coated in decaying detritus and moss-enveloped carcasses. When the levee does break it’s a torrent of ooze and cavernous, crushing riffs with enough mass behind them to shift mountains. As one listens you’ll find their tempo surprisingly steady, they aren’t about to outrun your capacity to experience their soundscape. But the result of that is a tsunami of tone thick and viscous enough to tear the flesh from your face. The weight this record possesses isn’t the kind that crushes you, rather it’s the variant that’ll tear forward-facing anatomy and bones from your body whilst attempting to remove such a mask of depravity.

Worm Altar’s death/doom is the kind laden with dread and a blackened blanket smothering all seeking refuge for salvation. As songwriting slows and the riffs calm into lingering resonance, the drums and bass carry forth the crawling momentum so though their pace relaxes the intensity never wavers. Then there’s the synergy between drums and guitar too, how the two feel inseparable, how they appear to crash together to form monolithic creations that impact the earth with megatons upon megatons. Even for death/doom Worm Altar’s sound is enormous and is reaching for faraway vistas beyond yourself alone; as if they’re yearning for targets beyond where you can say their sound is looking punch through your abdomen in order to achieve this.

Adding its weight to that cavernous aesthetic it’s noteworthy how Worm Altar’s sound doesn’t start and end on your face; there’s just enough room in the record for its sound to travel from band to you. What’s more, after a chord is performed there’s enough lingering present to recognise the record is just a little bigger than the band’s sound, enabling Worm Altar to conjure that cavernous howl, retching deep from the bowels of the earth. That’s why Pillars Of Eternal Dusk’s sound feels to punch through you, and yet coats your person entirely above, below, around. Like some viscous force borne off unknown origins Worm altar suffocate you with membranous viscera; you can certainly fight it, you can willingly struggle but you’re not going to remove its taut and malleable skin from your own.

A small aspect I think might go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things is Worm Altar’s choice, seemingly, to play and record the album in its entirety, in one take. As a track ends its recommended to listen closely to how it ends prior to the next beginning, the tone and lax songwriting will bleed into the next track then picking up the pieces and inject fresh adrenaline into it, thus revitalising Worm Altar’s cyclical approach to death/doom. It’s why their performance feels so destructive and engrossing, for there’s never a point where the band nullify their energy and have to rebirth it again. Across the six tracks arrayed there’s no instance where I felt like Worm Altar worked to pull me back in. I was always ready for more, ready to be struck repeatedly, because this ebb and flow tactic, like the sea, demonstrates how forces are always in motion whose energy is visible and dynamic.

In conclusion, Worm Altar’s debut full length album is a huge release for death/doom this latter part of 2026. With enough weight and size to off-kilter tectonic plates and a strategy employed to keep audiences enveloped and amazed even as tracks come to their end, Worm Altar utilise the cavernous soundscape to great effect. With six tracks and just long enough to make an impact, to mark their statement of what extreme metal is in their eyes, Worm Altar join the plethora of modern bands whose name is one to watch. Any fan of death/doom would be foolish to miss this as the band bring scathing atmosphere and harrowing vocals upon your pitiful frame.

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