Coming from Singapore, a territory hardly renowned for its extreme exports, Wormrot have imposed themselves over the years as one of the most vital outfits in world grindcore. Hiss, released amid a troubled period for the band, marks the culmination of a trajectory that has ceaselessly pushed back the limits of a genre often charged with monolithism. The critics (an 85 average across eleven reviews) see it as a work of rupture.
For Wormrot no longer content themselves with the raw fury and express tracks inherited from Napalm Death. The trio inject unexpected textures — a strident violin, almost post-rock stretches, tonal breaks that extend grindcore’s usual format. The voice of Arif Rot, flayed to the blood, deploys an emotional palette rare in a register that ordinarily favours pure aggression.
The press hail this enlarged ambition, this way of making grindcore a vector of emotion as much as of violence. The twenty-one tracks chain together without dead time, yet allow for breaths, zones of shadow, a dramaturgy that escapes mere onslaught. The record breathes a desperate, almost cathartic urgency.
One might regret that this shattering of codes at times blurs the legibility of the whole: in wanting too much to surprise, Hiss sometimes loses the thread of its own rage. But this risk-taking, disorienting as it is, commands respect.
Verdict: 8.5/10. A mature, heartrending grindcore record proving that the most abrasive genre can also become a space of intimate expression. A sumptuous farewell to a certain idea of the band.
