Written by We had to crop that header image, by the way. When we got sent Necropalace, the new album by Florida black metal duo Worm, one of the only pictures we got with it depicted the band’s frontman/founder Phantom Slaughter and guitarist Wroth Septentrion holding a dagger over a naked and very blood-soaked woman laying down on an altar. Shockingly, the story of how they took the photo is almost as barmy as the image itself.
“It was a day off on tour: we happened to be in Detroit, and there was some BDSM dungeon that we were going to stay at for the night,” says Phantom, talking as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Our tour manager’s always finding really unique places for us to stay, and he had some friends who owned a warehouse and did that kind of stuff. We spent the night and got a killer, iconic photo shoot out of it, and our tour manager ended up sleeping in a coffin.”
It’s all par for the course when you’re one of heavy music’s wackiest new bands. Mr Slaughter, whose real name remains a mystery to us, founded Worm as a solo project in 2012, after being inspired by the documentary Until The Light Takes Us and its depiction of Norwegian black metal. He channelled all of the infamous scene’s excess and kitchiness (minus the church burnings and murder) into his own music, putting on corpse paint and writing screeching, frost-bitten songs that often soared past the 10-minute mark.
“That documentary rocked my world,” Phantom recalls. “It mirrored emotions that I had in me but that I didn’t know could accompany a form of music. Hearing [Darkthrone drummer] Fenriz talk about Bathory, Celtic Frost and Venom, I just had this hunger for more and more and more. I built this romance with black metal and I built myself a whole world, because, living in Miami, my surroundings had nothing to do with that, and no one around me knew metal.”
Necropalace, their fourth and blackest album, is the purest distillation of Worm’s ludicrousness. The 12-minute title track and its music video tell you everything you need to know, opening with devastating chords and lead guitars, then breaking into a sprint of whirlwind drums and quasi-symphonic keyboards. The visuals look like a snuff-film-slash-giallo-horror dug up in the Scandinavian wilderness, with Phantom wearing gauntlets and wielding a sword for no reason. But, the most maximalist bit doesn’t come until eight minutes in, when Wroth nails a solo so over-the-top that it would leave Yngwie Malmsteen bug-eyed. It’s batshit brilliance, turning black metal up to 11 before tearing the knob off.
The rest of the record follows suit. The Night Has Fangs is a doom-drenched horror show, Dragon Dreams rises from Nordic-style folk whimsy to an ominous solo and booming metal, and Blackheart leans even further on Wroth’s theatrical talents. The last song, Witchmoon: The Infernal Masquerade, gets an additional shot of awesome when ex-Megadeth shredder Marty Friedman rocks up.
“I got a DM from him,” Phantom explains, “and I was like, ‘No way! This is a fucking bot!’ I went to his account and it actually was him. All he said was, ‘I love [Worm’s 2022 EP] Bluenothing.’ I was just like, ‘When we have an album, it wouldn’t hurt to ask him…’”
Worm haven’t just been sought out by Marty, either. They’ve supported death metal hot shots Gatecreeper all over America and, as of this album, are signed to Century Media: home to such stars as Lorna Shore, Arch Enemy and Fever 333. It’s a stark reversal of fortune compared to what Phantom felt when he was growing up, as an only child who didn’t like sports or going outside in sunny Miami.
“It was hard to find common ground with a lot of other kids in the area,” he remembers. “I got myself into trouble, because I wasn’t doing ‘normal’ stuff. I put myself in sticky situations because I wasn’t a part of the herd.”
Phantom is reluctant to talk about these situations, lest he harm the mystique of his band, but he reveals that he was a “knucklehead” who went from school to school because “I didn’t do what I was supposed to do”. He was part of a skating crew for a while, who’d “break into buildings and shit like that … just to kill the time”. He also remembers being dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night and taken to another state to serve six months in a juvenile detention centre.
“I’m not that person anymore,” he’s keen to emphasise when he talks about his history. “Ditching school, smoking weed, bringing liquor to school – over time, that will get you kicked out of school. When there’s no school for you to go to, they’ll find something, you know? I just wasn’t taking it seriously and I couldn’t get any of it.”
Phantom was aimless, until, aged “18 or 19”, he saw Until The Light Takes Us for the first time. Suddenly, all of his outsider feelings had an outlet, he discovered that there was a global community of people just like him, and his life had direction. “I was like, ‘I just have to think, breathe, sleep and eat this!’” he remembers.
Hearing Fenriz talk about Bathory, Celtic Frost and Venom, I just had this hunger for more and more and more!
Phantom Slaughter
Worm released their first album, Evocation Of The Black Marsh, in 2017. Initially, the band’s music integrated plenty of swampy doom and sludge, befitting of his childhood in close proximity to southern Florida’s humid everglades. Necropalace, though, is total blackened melodrama.
“Since [2021 album] Foreverglade, I’ve really wanted to make a 100-percent symphonic black metal album,” he says. “When I was in the demo days and I heard [Emperor’s landmark 1994 debut] In The Nightside Eclipse, I thought that was miles away. I thought I could never achieve something like that. But, now that I’m joined by Wroth as the other half of the band, I’m able to pretty much make the album of my dreams.”
At time of publication, Worm don’t have any live plans in the schedule, but Phantom promises that shows will be announced soon and declares that the production “must be over-the-top”. For now, this mysterious man is revelling in the fact he’s made the record he was always meant to: an uber-bombastic extension of the bands who gave him purpose back in his teens.
“You’re damned if you don’t!” he says. “You have to keep trying your best and, if you have a unique voice, say what you have to say and do what you have to. Doing that has empowered me in so many ways.”
Necropalace is out now via Century Media.
