WORM SHEPHERD is a Blackened Deathcore band "from the Northeast." With no information included in their EPK, nothing on their Facebook or Bandcamp pages, I really didn't have much to go on here. "In the Wake ov Sol" contains nine tracks. "Accursed" leads off the album. It opens with clean, classical guitars and some background ambiance. How majestic that sounds! The main riff drops, and we have a Symphonic Black Metal sound, that soon morphs into Deathcore sounds, with blast beat drumming and vocal utterances that are hard to make out. McClaim is an absolute beast on the kit. The Black Metal sound returns, as does the Deathcore sounds. This is usually not my cup of tea, but the musicianship is really outstanding.

"In the Wake ov Sol" begins with some darker elements in the music and vocals. The band really has a firm grasp of Classical music, and it shows. The chord progressions are right about what you would expect, but they also surprise you every now and again. The vocalist is very versatile, singing in several different styles. The harrowing elements are marked in filth. Following a deep breakdown, it rolls with chaos to completion. "Ragnarok" is the longest on the album, at just under eight-minutes in length. It opens with some light Symphonic elements that leads to bouts of Technical dissonance and bouts of fuller chaos interchanging several times throughout the song. The extended breakdown is almost too sterile to even register as music.

"Wrechedness upon the Gates" begins with the Deathcore sound loud and in your face. It takes a brief pause after two minutes, with eerie bell strikes leading to the breakdown. "The Emptiness between Stars" opens with some smooth and mellow ambiances. It leads to Deathcore elements pretty quickly thereafter, along with a slow, grinding pace that retreats towards the end, letting the opening ambiance out once more. You definitely get the sense of that void that the band is talking about in the title of the song.

"The Frozen Lake" begins with some lighter elements and spoken word. Piano notes come in as well. From there, wretched vocal screams combine with guttural utterances that again are very hard to discern. The drums and guitars hold down the mid-section with surgical precision. Darker elements come through strong in this song, as the title of the song would suggest. "Aether" is a three-and-a-half-minutes of intense rage that is relentless. The guitars do build a little harmony here and there, but the song is mostly about dissonance, with a hatred that is hard to face. Look inside yourself...do you see it there?

"Loathe" opens with heavy accents and machine gun drumming. As the vocals and drums rage, the guitars are so thick that you forget that the band doesn't have a bass player. At the half-way mark, it slows to a breakdown of utter power. "The Crimson Moon Unwithered" closes the album. It begins with some vocal choirs that lead to a longing feeling, that is soon dashed by vile and wicked vocals. The Black Metal elements make a return for a brief few moments. But the Deathcore sound reigns supreme. They just pack about as much as one possibly can into this song.

What amazes me perhaps most about the album is that the quartet is obviously talented at constructing well-thought-out songs with Classical elements tinged to them. I also can't say enough about the kit skills of Leo McClaim. We all know how demanding this style of music is on the drummer, and the precision he handles the work with is astounding. I find the style to be closer to Deathcore than Black Metal, but that is just my obsessive need to overly categorize the music I listen to. Like I said before, this usually isn't my cup of tea, but the band is just so good at constructing music, you can't help but take notice.