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WHARFLURCH
Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell

Personal / Gurgling Gore (2021)
Rating: 9/10

Since forming in 2019, Floridian death metallers Wharflurch has existed like some bad trip within the extreme metal scene. Their slightly unorthodox brand of hellish grinding has come to full fruition now with this debut full-length opus – a peculiar (more so down to the cover) soundtrack of eerie drippage, putrid swampage and fetid hallucinations.

Such sinister stirrings are formed from unnatural cosmic springs and billowing pillars of unknown origin. Where the band members get their ideas is beyond our comprehension, and all we can do is become one with the slime-coated, membranous hours of instrumentation.

The cover art suggests some sort of maniacal, garish clambering up walls of clandestine asylums as gnashing rhythms boil against slithering, blubber masses of bass bone and percussion.

‘Celestial Mycelium’, ‘Phantasmagorical Fumes’ and ‘Bog Body Boletus’ suggest further half-hinted horrors beyond the Lovecraft realm as Wharflurch creates cyst-ravaged orgies of miserable sound awash with kaleidoscopic nightmares. Strange, swirling guitars emerge from ashes geysers of ghoulish grimness, an aching interlude protrudes from the miasmal, dismal flab.

‘Stoned Ape Apocalypse’ begins like some lost 70s sci-fi theme and then incinerates with its gushes of deathly gloom fumes.

Everything offered is thick and cloying with dense walls of doom spray-painted with Technicolor horror. Bright, vivid dreamscapes drench each instrument as orgies of anguish, despair and multicoloured mayhem combine.

‘Abandoning Reality’ literally forces the listener to do just that – a cosmic enveloping of suffocating mesh brimming with liquefied remains and oozing quagmire stench. Meanwhile, the title track closes like some otherworldly curtain of vaporized flesh; a toxic cosmic slop seething, creeping and sealing your fate.

Just throw this mess of cesspit psych into the same festering hole as Seattle’s Cerebral Rot and let these two leviathans of loopy misery eat each other alive.

No words, however cryptic quizzical or quirky, can describe such abysmal yet vibrant sounds. It’s apt then that the album title should be so fitting. My only gripe is that the album isn’t long enough, but I guess all bad trips have to end somewhere until the next tab hits the brain.

Neil Arnold

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