HMLTD — The Worm — Album Review
Alternative | Indie | Art Rock
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music
The London-based art-rock band known as HMLTD is an outfit that I first discovered through inklings of their 2018 EP, Hate Music Last Time Delete. Since then, the band had culminated almost all of their previous works into one debut album, released in 2020, and titled West of Eden. This album served as the first HMLTD project that I ended up reviewing, and it was a pretty positive review of that. HMLTD certainly left their mark with a unique fusion of art punk, electronic, and even a few country elements here and there. That being said, I was excited to see where the band would go from their debut.
just over three years later, we would get our answer in the form of HMLTD’s brand new sophomore album, titled The Worm. And given that it has been a fair while since their last big project, and the fact that I hadn’t listened to any of the teasers prior, I almost felt as if I had a blank slate of expectations going into this new album, an exciting prospect, to say the least.
As I would later discover, The Worm has the thematic strength to truly justify the art-rock demeanour of HMLTD. In short, it seems that the titular “worm” is a metaphor of hatred, envy, and ego (I mean, vocalist Henry Spychalski exclaims this loud and clear in the album’s title track). On top of that, we have various sound clips focusing on what seems to be a therapist (namely on the track “Liverpool Street”), helping to tie the album’s focal theme together.
Tying in with this narrative, we have a very theatrical and almost medieval aesthetic, as the cover art for this album suggests. The whole thing seems like some kind of high-end musical theatre production, which was a marvellous experience to behold.
While the narrative and overall aesthetic of The Worm is undoubtedly where this album shines, there’s definitely something to be said about a the tracks on here as well. My personal highlights from the album include “The End Is Now”, by virtue of easily being the most catchy and accessible tracks from the album, the aforementioned “Liverpool Street” for being heart-wrenchingly gorgeous, and also being the moment in which the narrative really struck me, and of course the title track for rampint the theatrics up to eleven.
In terms of the album’s overall experience as a whole, I feel like the strength of the narrative is enough to make The Worm one of those those albums to really stick out in this musical year. It’s fair to say that the impact that HMLTD wanted to achieve with their sophomore record totally shines through. And on top of that, they have brought forward a very solid handful of amazing tracks to back that sense of impact up. Fair to say, The Worm is the sophomore album that was well worth the wait.
Favourite Tracks: The End Is Now | Liverpool Street | The Worm | Past Life (Sinnerman’s Song)
Least Favourite Track: Saddest Worm Ever
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