WHARFLURCH are streaming their second album in full. "Mycodeath And Rebirth In The Outer Clusters" is playing in its entirety on the Death Metal Promotion YouTube channel ahead of its international release tomorrow, September 25.
Three labels are splitting the formats. The vinyl LP comes from Personal Records, Gurgling Gore and Dawnbreed Records; the CD from Personal and Dawnbreed; the tape exclusively from Gurgling Gore.
The album is a direct sequel, and it has been a long time coming. "Psychedelic Realms ov Hell" ended in 2021 with its protagonist lost in a fungal haze of disillusionment, and there he stayed. "Mycodeath And Rebirth" picks him up at the edge of a journey to the furthest regions of the universe, where the mushroom entities running the whole arrangement finally explain what they have been doing to Earth — and that Earth was never a special case. The conceit, built by John Mamo and Myk Colby, is a cosmos quietly administered by puppet-master fungal beings who seed viable planets with their own spore-kind and cultivate sentient life to taste. It is world-building of a sort death metal rarely attempts at this length, and the band commit to it completely.
Recording started in very late 2021, which tells you most of what you need to know about the five-year gap. What emerged is a widened version of the WHARFLURCH sound: dismal doom-death, riffs piled into a heap and sorted later, the album swinging between chunky and plodding on one side and tricky, obtuse and genuinely beautiful on the other. The synth flourishes that have always been their signature do the cosmic heavy lifting.
The reference points the band offer are TIMEGHOUL and DEMILICH, which is less a claim about sound than about permission — both are cult names precisely because they treated death metal as a place to be strange in rather than a template to satisfy. WHARFLURCH take the conceptual licence and little else.
Vocals are split between Mamo and Colby, with two guests changing the texture of the narration. Garrett Alvarado of Minnesota death metal band MAUL voices the ruling spore entities, and Jamie Stewart — of THE ABSENCE, HOT GRAVES and PARTY TIME — handles narration and guest vocals across several tracks, so the story is told by more than one throat.
The artwork is by Claw//Eight, who has drawn most of WHARFLURCH's visual output over the years and has toured in the van with them, a level of involvement that earns a credit closer to band member than illustrator.
"Mycodeath And Rebirth In The Outer Clusters" track listing:
- Death Toll Horror
- Forgotten Temple
- Non Zero Expanse
- Headless God
- Dimensional Parasite
- The Leaving Orbs
- Revelations Ov The Spore Lords
- Mycodeath And Rebirth Awakening The Emissary