{"id":298225,"date":"2026-02-14T19:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298225\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T19:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:29:07","slug":"gorrch-stillamentum-review-angry-metal-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298225\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorrch – Stillamentum Review | Angry Metal Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Michael Dorn has appeared on screen in more episodes of Star Trek than anyone else. His character, the mighty Klingon warrior, Captain Worf is known to greatly enjoy gagh, a traditional Klingon delicacy comprised of live, wriggling serpent worms. It\u2019s fucking gross. It\u2019s also the first thing I thought of when I saw the album art for Gorrch\u2019s sophomore effort, Stillamentum. Founded in 2010 and hailing from Cavaso del Tomba in northeastern Italy, Gorrch is the unsettling black metal project of fraternal duo, Chrimsicrin and Droich. Now, a decade after 2015 debut Nera estasi, Gorrch plumbs the depths of the abyss, seeking to give voice to the primal fear and disgust of being covered in roiling, writhing masses of maggots.<\/p>\n

Standard black metal isn\u2019t dark enough for Gorrch. Stillamentum is about horror and dread. Opener \u201cNimbus\u201d wastes no time burying you alive in a cramped wooden box. Guitars like clamoring bells ring with sanity-threatening dissonance while pummeling blast beats quickly deplete your limited oxygen. Droich viciously saws at palm-muted strings like the erratic, terrifying sprints of cockroaches exploring what\u2019s in the box (you). A lull at the midpoint ushers in a spiraling riff, rising like your gorge in mortal terror. Heretical Gregorian chanting reveals your captors as zealots, and all hope of seeing the sun again dies. Deranged prayers ripped from Chrimsicrin\u2019s throat (\u201cVorago,\u201d \u201cAngor\u201d), metallic tones like snapping wires (\u201cVorago,\u201d \u201cLarv\u00e6\u201d), and ritualistic percussion (\u201cPhlegma\u201d) keep you locked in this waking nightmare. The blasphemous love child of Gaerea and Imperial Triumphant, Stillamentum is cacophonous, claustrophobic, and rapturously disturbed.<\/p>\n

St\ufeffillamentum by Gorrch<\/a><\/p>\n

Developing and fostering atmosphere through repetition is a common trope in black metal. Stillamentum is no exception, but Gorrch\u2019s approach makes the assessment thereof a bit of a challenge. Each track begins with strong, fast riffs, either searing or psychotic, drawing me in and demanding my attention. Somewhere in the middle third, however, long passages featuring markedly less instrumental variation take over and guide the song to its conclusion. The result is two or three minutes of relatively repetitive instrumentals per track. This was not an issue while running errands or gaming or otherwise spinning Stillamentum in the background\u2014and was in fact a boon\u2014as I enjoyed basking in the consistent atmosphere, but on focused listens, these stretched sections can stall the furious momentum gained earlier in each song.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This same critique can be found mirrored in the structure of Stillamentum as a whole. The front half\u2014\u201cNimbus,\u201d \u201cVorago,\u201d and \u201cLarv\u00e6\u201d\u2014as well as closer \u201cPhlegma,\u201d evoke a singular and impressive sense of fear. \u201cCrypt\u00e6\u201d and \u201cAngor,\u201d however, feel less inspired, giving the album\u2019s quality a parabolic shape. They\u2019re not bad songs by any means; there are parts of each I particularly enjoyed. I loved the tempo shift at the midpoint of \u201cAngor\u201d and the clanging, descending riffs in \u201cCrypt\u00e6,\u201d and the synergy between the ritual chanting and Chrimsicrin\u2019s drum work on both tracks is very effective. Even so, they seem closer to boilerplate black metal than the rest of Stillamentum, their teeth notably blunter in comparison. As on the level of individual tracks, this structure works well in the background, but under scrutiny, it highlights opportunities for Gorrch to improve their pacing and direction.<\/p>\n

Gorrch shines brightest at their darkest and most unsafe. On Stillamentum, theirs is an abyssal darkness, drenched in formicative horror and clothed in perverse piety. At their most oppressive, Gorrch is exactly my kind of black metal: suffocating, malicious, dissonant, and maybe a little blasphemous. Were I grading based on highlights alone, Stillamentum would score much higher. Alas, those peaks are saddled with overlong atmospheric passages, a slight overuse of chanting vocals, and mildly inconsistent quality. If Gorrch can distill their strengths from Stillamentum and hone them to delve even deeper into the void, they\u2019ll unearth something truly unspeakable.<\/p>\n

Rating: 3.0\/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music<\/a>
Websites: Bandcamp<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Dorn has appeared on screen in more episodes of Star Trek than anyone else. His character, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[23197,5809,138542,28492,93,141584,141585,61,110754,60,36736,120257,278,563,564,141586],"class_list":{"0":"post-298225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-23197","9":"tag-3-0","10":"tag-avantgarde-music","11":"tag-black-metal","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-gaerea","14":"tag-gorrch","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-imperial-triumphant","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-italian-metal","19":"tag-jan26","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-review","22":"tag-reviews","23":"tag-stillamentum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}