Worm Ouroboros

Worm Ouroboros

What Graceless Dawn

Profound Lore

Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. With their third album What Graceless Dawn, Oakland’s Worm Ouroboros bring into existence their deepest and most moving work yet. On the follow-up to the band’s sophomore release, 2012’s Come The Thaw, bassist/vocalist Lorraine Rath (ex-The Gault / Amber Asylum), guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way (Barren Harvest), and drummer Aesop Dekker (Vhol, ex-Agalloch / Ludicra) take the band’s sound to a new level of sophistication through their amalgam of morose 4AD-esque doom, introspective death rock, dark ambient, and enchanting chamber goth. Replete with obsessive bass lines, ambient guitar layers and overtones, the alluring vocal inter-twinings between Rath and Way, and Dekker’s subtle yet procession-like percussion, this sonic vision of tragedy and despair brings the curtain down on the year with one of the most crippling and gut-wrenching releases in the realm.

Worm Ouroboros

Come The Thaw

Profound Lore

Formed in 2008 by Lorraine Rath (ex-The Gault, Amber Asylum) and Jessica Way, San Francisco’s Worm Ouroboros made quite an impression with their self-titled debut album—described by Decibel magazine as “Kate Bush sitting in with Asunder.” Their delicately constructed chamber pieces, an immaculate combination of ’80s 4AD-inspired dark rock and doom metal, provided the perfect accompaniment to Agalloch on that band’s Marrow of the Spirit North American tour in the spring of 2011, and Worm Ouroboros even had the live set from their NY show streamed on NPR.  Now joined by veteran drumming underground legend Aesop Dekker (of Agalloch and the now-defunct Ludicra) on drums, Worm Ouroboros presents their most fully realized work yet. On Come the Thaw, the group refines their musical craft into something more meticulous and moving, staking out a much darker, more somber and delicate-sounding territory.

Worm Ouroboros

S/t

Profound Lore

Dark ambient chamber rock group Worm Ouroboros, one of the most promising new Bay Area act to emerge this past year, present their self-titled debut album on Profound Lore Records. Featuring members from a number of still-active local legends including Amber Asylum and World Eater, Worm Ouroboros draws from similar influences. Most notably, bassist/singer Lorraine Rath shared songwriting duties with John Gossard (Asunder/Weakling) in The Gault. The doom-edged sound the band conjures on Worm Ouroboros is reminiscent of classic 4AD acts like This Mortal Coil and The Cocteau Twins. Delicately crafted structures counterbalance segments of distorted, down-tuned heaviness, resulting in an ethereal and atmospheric vibe that unfolds over the course of the album's nine tracks.  The cover was designed by Rath herself, an artist in her own right who also supplied the stunning artwork that graced the debut Hammers of Misfortune album The Bastard.