Lumbar support for your worm-chewed corpse.

On October 18, the bros from Örebro Carnosus will release their third full-length Wormtales on Willowtip Records. Coming just 20 months after their smash-hit sophomore record Visions of Infinihility, Wormtales is billed as a “heavier and darker” prequel to that master-class in melodically-inflected, thrashy technical death metal. Drawing favourable comparisons to acts such as Revocation, Archspire, and The Black Dahlia Murder, Visions of Infinihility was a major statement for the band and demonstrated their impressive range. Without having heard Carnosus before last year’s record, I can still feel the gleeful shock of hearing album opener “Ossein Larcenist” for the first time.

And so here we are, not even two years later, premiering the third single for Wormtales. Thus far, we’ve heard “Within Throat, Within Heart” and “Worm Charmer,” two songs that, along with “Yearnings of a Rotten Spine,” comprise most of the album’s first half. “Within Throat, Within Heart” is still firmly entrenched in the world of Revocation and Archspire, trading neoclassical leads and thrashy riffs over a bouncy rhythm section. Jonatan Karasiak’s are even rangier than before, as his signature tongue trilling punctuates a deeper growl and a more feral screech. “Worm Charmer” starts with a head-bashing stomp before injecting the kind of grooved-out breakdown that makes Carnosus so addictive. The album, as it stretches the band’s sound even further in all directions, almost, at times, takes on the air of a hyper-melodic Cattle Decapitation, whatever that might be.

Take everything I’ve said so far and bold, underline, and italicize it for emphasis. “Yearnings of a Rotten Spine” is anchored by a diabolically catchy groove-breakdown that repeats itself amid the energetic counter-play between riff and rhythm and shifts from scalar technical passages to rumbling thrash attacks. Karasiak’s vocals performance, as balanced as it is deranged, seems almost designed to test the band’s capacity. What’s so fun about “Yearnings of a Rotten Spine” in particular and Carnosus more generally is a sense that the band knows how to work together seamlessly while each individual member pushes individually towards his outermost limits. It’s this very tension, between being perfectly in sync and just on the side of intelligibility that seems to be the hallmark of the band.

Delightfully, the band has this so say about the track:

With the third and last single from our upcoming album Wormtales, we bring you ‘Yearnings of a Rotten Spine.’ This song delivers heavy and melodic riffing, mixing groove and fast sections with intense vocals. The Carnosus recipe.

If bands are going to be that precise and exacting about their own music, why am I even here? I guess to be the first to take a taste. Feast your eyes and ears and tongues and other sensory organs on the video below.

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Wormtales will release on October 18
via Willowtip Records.
Get some wormwax, some wormtape, some wormsleeves.
It’s all the rage these days.