Release Date September 25th, 2026
Format LP/CD/Tape
Genre Death/Doom Metal
Origin USA
Wharflurch is a death doom band from the United States, and its first album, “Psychedelic Realms Ov Hell”, came out in 2021 and ended with its hero lost in a fungal haze. John Mamo and Myk Colby write the music, the lyrics and the story, and they share the vocals. Garrett Alvarado, frontman of the Midwest death metal band Maul, voices the Sporelords. Jamie Stewart, from The Abscence, Party Time and Hot Graves, adds spoken parts and guest vocals on several tracks. The artwork comes from Claw//Eight, who has worked with the band for years and has joined them on tour.
“Mycodeath And Rebirth In The Outer Clusters” is the second album and picks the story up where the first one stopped. The hero reaches the far edge of the universe, where the Mycolords reveal that their experiment on Earth is one case among many. Mushroom entities seed planets with spores to grow intelligent life on their own schedule, and it is a full science fiction plot, not a loose theme. Splitting the vocals across Mamo, Colby, Alvarado and Stewart gives each side of the story its own voice, and that decision is the most original move here. Newcomers start in the middle of the plot, so the first album is the better door in. Musically it is death doom with a psychedelic streak.
The riffs swing between heavy, catchy and plodding lines and twisted, awkward, beautiful ones, with synth flourishes laid over them as a cosmic layer that stays an accent and never takes over. Eight tracks stretch to forty five minutes, and the album closes on its longest track, “Mycodeath And Rebirth”, ends the story at the right spot. The swing between plodding and obtuse does not always connect, and when the riffs turn awkward the track lengths start to show more than once. As a sequel it is committed, strange and written with real conviction, and the concept comes with riffs strong enough to hold it up.
|7.5
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