ANCIENT MALICE - Worm Tongue

Emerging from Dublin’s DIY death metal and grindcore scene, ANCIENT MALICE have already drawn remarkably clear aesthetic boundaries around their music despite their relatively short history. Following the band’s 2025 debut album "Accept the Vile Gifts of the Dead", "Worm Tongue" condenses that approach into a shorter, denser and more direct form. Across five tracks, the EP treats the raw production ethos of old demo culture not merely as a visual or nostalgic choice, but as part of the way the music itself is performed.

Production sits at the heart of this approach. Recorded without a click track or drop-ins, the songs carry a sense of performance deliberately removed from the pursuit of perfection. The drums, particularly the natural and uncontrolled character of the cymbals, combine with the guitars’ filthy HM-2 tone to set "Worm Tongue" apart from the overly polished death metal recordings of today. Yet that rawness does not mean a lack of direction. Most of the riffs are built around straightforward, rhythmically accessible structures that make their impact quickly. This is precisely where ANCIENT MALICE succeed: they recreate the aesthetic of old-school deathgrind without reducing the music to a mere copy of recordings from the past.

'Oracle of Lies' is a good example of this approach. High-tempo guitar runs and blast beats keep the track moving relentlessly forward, while a groove section emerging toward the end prevents the arrangement from remaining locked at a single speed. Brief clean vocals and an unexpected solo add another shade without disrupting the track’s underlying aggression. 'Eko Eko Azarak', meanwhile, leans into a more uncontrolled energy; galloping drums, sharp guitars and a harsh vocal line are tightly intertwined, while the use of the whammy bar reinforces the track’s chaotic character.

The EP’s most interesting departure arrives with 'Saprophiliax'. Stretching to around five minutes, the track moves away from deathgrind’s usual brevity and makes room for doom-tinged heavy sections. The drop in tempo, combined with the guitars’ murkier and heavier character, creates a counterpoint to the high-speed approach heard elsewhere on the EP. The mid-tempo groove sections in particular, along with the deep growls, give the track a pronounced sense of weight. The choice may be debatable from a deathgrind purist’s perspective, but it clearly adds musical variety to the EP. ANCIENT MALICE do not abandon the genre’s core energy here; they simply broaden the range of ways in which it can be used.

With the title track 'Worm Tongue', the band shifts back into high gear. The speed makes the music’s live-played feel even more pronounced. The impression that the riffs and drums are pushing rather than merely following one another makes the recording feel closer to a performance in a rehearsal room than a conventional studio take. Closing track 'Billions Must Grind' takes this even further, reducing grindcore’s ultra-short format almost to a reflex. At this point, it is less the length of the songs than the compositional approach that stands out: establishing an idea within a matter of seconds and pushing it as far as it can go.

The EP’s musical references are equally apparent. The influence of acts such as early ENTOMBED, NAPALM DEATH, REPULSION, MORBID ANGEL, DEICIDE and TERRORIZER can be felt particularly in the guitar tone, the use of blast beats and the transitions between death metal and grindcore. But the value of "Worm Tongue" lies less in reminding the listener of these bands than in taking their shared aesthetic heritage into a smaller, dirtier working space. The recording technique in particular turns the band’s backward-looking approach into a musical identity; the old-school feel is not an effect added after the fact, but one of the fundamental elements determining how the songs are played.

That said, the EP’s simplicity occasionally approaches its own limits. The directness of the riffs and the consistently high energy may prove restrictive for listeners looking for more complex songwriting. Tracks such as 'Microdot' and 'Infocancer', meanwhile, are so brief that they feel less like fully developed songs than momentary strikes inserted into the EP’s uninterrupted flow. But "Worm Tongue" is not aiming to be an expansive display of compositional range in the first place. Its impact comes from concentrating the dirty, fast and physical side of death metal and grindcore as intensely as possible while avoiding unnecessary embellishment.

Ultimately, "Worm Tongue" is a short but distinctive EP that shows ANCIENT MALICE are not using nostalgia as a costume. Raw recording, HM-2 guitars, blast beats, heavy mid-tempo passages and sudden grindcore bursts all converge within the same aesthetic framework. The band does not yet have a long enough discography to demonstrate how far this material could be taken into a broader and more complex compositional space; even so, they have a remarkably clear understanding of what their music needs to be in its current form. That is where "Worm Tongue" truly succeeds: rather than merely reviving the language of deathgrind’s past, it reminds us that the direct physical execution of that language can still be effective.

Bandcamp: https://ancientmalice.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancientmalice666/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/59JPVPDHnKDw3jgLsjgoQf