Worselder – Redshift

By RingMaster Review on March 26, 2023 • ( 0 )

Hailing from the heart of the French Pyrénées, WORSELDER is one of those bands which challenge the want to pigeonhole and the need to place an artist’s sound in a precise box. Indeed, the metallers bear an instinct to organically draw on anything which sparks their imagination for a sound which takes no prisoners yet with their victims hooked treats them to an almost kaleidoscopic tempest of enterprise, the evidence for our thoughts all there within the band’s new album, Redshift.

WORSELDER emerged in 2008 and soon began weaving a proposition in sound as individual and inventive as it was voracious in attack. At its core, you could describe their music as a fusion of old school metal, heavy metal and thrash but over the years and releases it has keenly added an embrace of many more genres and flavours. The new album bears essences of doom, alt, death and power metal with more beside in its creative arsenal with the vocal side of the band just as dextrous.

Following a demo release in 2010, the quintet unveiled three-track EP MMXIV to rich acclaim in 2014, following it up in prowess and praise three years later with their first album, the Sliptrick Records released Paradigms Lost. The next two years or so saw the band promoting it live across France, sharing stages with the likes of FIREWIND, DAGOBA, BLACK BOMB A, HUNTRESS along the way. Locked down by the pandemic, WORSELDER began production on their sophomore album in 2020, the album recorded, mixed and mastered by Bruno Varéa and now uncaged to unleash another powerful surge in the band’s ascent upon the attention of world metal.

Redshift opens with the outstanding Para Bellum, a track instantly revealing the multi-flavoured prowess of the band’s sound and its forceful command on ears and attention. Thrash fuelled but equally rich in groove and heavy metal invention, the song surged through ears before settling in an imposing and compelling trespass. Every moment brought a new twist though, every subsequent turn in its enterprise as captivating and involving with Guillaume Granier’s vocals just as eventful, dynamic and style embracing.

Point Of Divergence follows and immediately uncages a keen riffs led nagging as rhythms share pugilistic intent. In short time too, the guitars of Yoric Oliveras and Jérémie Delattre weave webs of tempting amid invasions of sonic dispute, a disagreeable confrontation escalated in the rhythmic swings of drummer Michel Marcq and the predacious basslines of Yannick Fernandez, the latter’s backing vocals just as intimidating and appealing. As its predecessor, the track had ears gripped and appetite aflame as WORSELDER held court with their tempest of sound and arsenal of enterprise and craft.

Both tracks left expectations and assumptions floundering, a trait continuing across the whole of the release and in next up Pillars Of Smoke. It too begins with threat and suggestion, jabbing rhythms setting the tone as the guitars weaved another entrapping web of sonic enticement. Classic and extreme textures collude in the song’s evolution; shades matched in vocals as another tapestry of styles become thick captivation. There is also an instinctive virulence to WORSELDER’S music even in its darkest most grievous moments, an additional inescapable draw just as imposing within the groove strapped, funk coloured Absurd Heroes. Classic and heavy metal equally adds to its eventful proposition but again a song which seems to evolve by the minute in imagination and sound.

Atheist is next up and prowls ears initially with only sonic and melodically cured lures before rhythms and riffs reveal their rapacious intent and urgency. It also has keen infectiousness to it even as its barbarous side reveals its esurient presence while its successor, The Exoteric Verses, casts a sinister edge with its doom lit bait and predatory alt metal exploits. Again though, many more flavours become involved with the WORSELDER sound and imagination, it another irrepressible track which held ears and fascination in an iron grip throughout.

Insurgents (Part 1) and (Part 2) follows with the first casting an instrumental realm of melodic suggestion within a subsequent realm of disturbance and violence. It is a piece offering hope and good will in its breath and intimation, but a potential soon gripped by the sonic eddies of the second part. A tumult of emotive and physical unrest, it is also a track ensnaring ears in enlivening sonic spirals and anthemic kilned enterprise, a song with a mercurial landscape which inflamed our attention and pleasure from start to finish, much as the album itself.

Ascent To Rebirth brings the release to a close, a track part predation part seduction in its design and presence and all captivation from voice to craft and from assault to involvement. It epitomised the united imagination and enterprise as well as the individual prowess of the band in six minutes plus of adventure and emotive implication.

WORSELDER is a band which is evolving into one of metal’s most unique and thrilling propositions with Redshift their finest most compelling release yet.

Redshift is out now under ELLIE PROMOTION and SEASON OF MIST distribution; available @ https://shop.season-of-mist.com/worselder-redshift-cd-digipak