Wømb: Perceptions of Sightlessness (2013)

Last year, about this exact same time of year, I purchased the physical copy of a split that had been previously emailed to me by the record label for a review.  It was a split that I enjoyed and I decided to try to track down a physical copy of it.  Unfortunately, the seller indicated that he was having some difficulty in finding it and then never got back to me.  I got my money back, but not the split.  And so, I decided to keep my eyes open for the physical copy of the split, but purchase what I could of the two bands involved.  Several months ago, I picked up the Hellcharge demo.  And just recently, I received this demo by Portuguese black metal band Wømb.

Wømb is the much more raw and chaotic of the two bands featured on the This Knot... split.  Their sound has a lot of punk elements and call back to the early days when black metal was being formed out of speed, thrash, and punk.  The production is incredibly lo-fi and murky as hell, making it sometimes difficult to fully grasp what is being done musically.  But, let's be honest here, the band is really just making a lot of noise.  There is no real melodies, just riffs and pounding drums with shrieked vocals.  The songs are all very short, with one song just barely longer than three and a half minutes.  So that makes this a very quick and hostile listen.

There is not much information that I can find about Wømb.  Members are not named anywhere.  I get the impression there are two of them, based on very fuzzy pictures.  The band is fairly active releasing mostly demos and splits, no full-length releases.  It is not likely they are seeking fame of any sort based on all of this.

I think the Portuguese black metal scene is somewhat underrated personally.  I quite enjoy this band's chaotic take on black metal and I liked Hellcharge a bit too, though not quite as much.  My favorite band though will be looked at in the next post.