Singapore's grindcore band Wormrot have released another new track, "Erased Existence", from their forthcoming album, Dirge.



The band is kicking off their Dirge Across America tour next month in San Diego and the band will be touring cross-country through March and April. Tour dates are below and presumably a NYC date will be slotted sometime in early April.

Dirge Across America Tour Dates
Mar 03 - San Diego, CA - The Ruby Room
Mar 04 - Los Angeles, CA - The Blvd.
Mar 05 - Pomona, CA - The Glass House (Scion Rock Fest)
Mar 06 - Oakland, Ca - Hazmat Warehouse
Mar 07 - Sacramento, CA - On The Y
Mar 08 - Reno, NV - Ground Zero (House Show)
Mar 10 - Portland, OR - Red Room
Mar 11 - Seattle, WA - The Morgue
Mar 12 - Boise, ID - The Shredder
Mar 13 - Salt Lake City, UT - Raunch Records
Mar 14 - Cheyenne, WY - Ernie November (In-store)
Mar 15 - Denver, CO - Blast-O-Mat
Mar 17 - Austin, TX - Lipps Lounge
Mar 18 - Austin, TX - Lovejoys

w/TOMBS
Mar 22 - New Orleans, LA - Siberia
Mar 23 - Panama City, FL - C-Level
Mar 24 - Tampa, FL - Ransitions Art Gallery
Mar 25 - Miami, FL - Churchill's Pub
Mar 26 - Orlando, FL - Will's Pub
Mar 27 - Atlanta, GA - Archive Gallery
Mar 28 - Charlotte, NC - The Milestone
Mar 29 - Richmond, VA - Gallery 5
Mar 30 - Washington, DC - The Red Door
Mar 31 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
Apr 01 - Worcester, MA - Club Oasis
Apr 02 - Brockton, MA - O'Brien's Pub
-----------------------
Apr 05 - Peeksill, NY - Popeye's
Apr 07 - Cleveland, OH - Now That's Class
Apr 08 - Lansing, MI - Mac's Bar
Apr 09 - Chicago, IL - Memories
Apr 10 - Milwaukee, WI - Mad planet
Apr 12 - Columbia, MO - Sideshow
Apr 13 - Oklahoma City, OK - The Conservatory

The three members of Wormrot are Rasyid (guitar), Fitri (drums) and Arif (vocals) and the band’s debut CD Abuse came out last summer on Earache Records. Arif mixed and mastered the disc and (surprisingly, given the genre) gave the band a clean and balanced sound. The original 23-track disc has now been supplemented with a 34-track bonus disc entitled Extra Abuse which contains the band’s 2007 demo tracks, an Insect Warefare cover, the band’s two EPs from 2008 (“Dead” and the Wormrot tracks from a split with Diseptic along with a handful of previously unreleased tracks from 2009.

I’ve never been a huge grindcore fan as most artists in the genre seem to be going for aggressive power over song structure. I’m over-generalizing with this next comment but after listening to a ‘run of the mill’ grindcore disc with 15-20 one minute songs, I generally feel pummeled by the intensity but none of the songs ever seem to stick with me. What I mean by this is that when replaying the disc, I have no reason to drop on any individual tracks. Singapore-based grindcore trio Wormrot add some extra elements to the standard grindcore formula which makes this disc (and a number of songs within) stand out from the pack.

Where Wormrot breaks from the grindcore pack is that the band has more of a song-orientation that focuses on the guitar and vocal work. Rasyid breaks from the d-beat sound to play some thrash, groove and (almost) alt-rock riffs on various tracks. Arif’s vocals range from shout-along slogans to the cookie-monster growls and black metal screams and both he and Rasyid mix up their styles which keeps the disc sounding fresh and the tracks distinctive. Fitri predominately pounds the drums with a high-velocity blast beat but he too mixes things up with some offbeat fills and polyrhythmic beats. Fitri plays so hard that the band had to stop their show last year at Bowery Electric to fix the drum kit.



While the band has a political bent (the disc opens with the spoken word snippet "Here's your Patriot Act! Here's your fucking abuse of power!" from student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, after being repeatedly tasered in the UCLA library ), they also have a wicked sense of humor. This humor comes out on tracks like the melodic “Fuck…I’m Drunk”, the groove-oriented “Overgrown Asshole” and a complete deconstruction of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Rich” (where the band lops three minutes off the original song).

Links:
Wormrot