We are honored and proud to announce the release of the cassette tape version of the new full length album by eccentric Bay Area-based one-man black metal project Palace of Worms. Titled The Ladder - Palace of Worm’s new record is over forty five minutes of lightless, dismal, and soul-draining aural misery. A bleak and lonesome descent into endless starless night and into bottomless aural agony. A voyage into the depths of a wretched soul where melody and bitter aggression coexist in eternal pain, and where hope is just a cold, minuscule, and dying flickering light lost far away in the distance, forever beyond grasp. Seamlessly blending black metal, post-rock, deathrock and gothic elements The Ladder is a shapeshifting and unsettling listening experience where genres are bent and blended into a dark and tenebrous blur of melody, rage, despair, and pitch black atmospheres, all contained within the spiraling movement of seven eccentric and and winding compositions of stunning beauty and unsettling magnetism that will captivate the senses of those who have loved similar works by bands like Lychgate, Enslaved, Tombs, Drudkh, Agalloch, Winterfylleth, Taake, Shining and the such.
Palace of Worms is the brainchild of sole mastermind Balan, a staple fixture in the Bay Area’s extreme metal underground since at least the last decade. Throughout the years Balan has also militated in notable Bay Area heathens as Larvae, Ordo Obsidium, Botanist and more, and has shaped Palace of Worms to become one of the most raw, unforgiving, visionary and genre-bending black metal acts to ever tread West Coast soil. Constantly yielding a prolific and steady flow of splits and records released for the most part by San Francisco-based genre-defying label Flenser Records, Palace of Worms has always showcased a noticeably curved stylistic trajectory, that far from following black metal in a straight line and by the book has instead always escorted the listener into unusual, strange, surreal and bizarre realms of the craft, as seen for example in other similarly eccentric black metal bands such as Peste Noire, L'Acephale, Yellow Eyes, and Leather Chalice. Listening to Palace of Worms’ music means taking a deep dive into Balan’s mind. A place of wretched visions and collapsing emotions. A place where emptiness devours everything and where the notions of loss and hopelessness are taken to a totally new level of aural atrocity.
The Ladder - which will also see a vinyl release through Broken Limbs Recordings - was recorded by Eric Iverson, mixed by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios (Graves at Sea, Noothgrush, Iron Lung), and was mastered By Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Whirr, Grayceon). The gorgeous artwork was made for Balan by Raven Exner, while the design and layout was done by Kevin Gan Yuen (Dead to A Dying World, Lychgate, Sutekh Hexen). The Ladder also features guest performances by Ephemeral Domignostika (Mastery, Pale Chalice), Bezaelith (Lotus Thief), and Mattia Alagna (Abstracter, Atrament).
You can now stream the track Nightworld courtesy of Stereogum, while pre-orders are now available here on our website as well as on our Bandcamp.