The Worm
Created over the course of two years with a cast of 47 musicians – including a gospel choir and a 16-piece string orchestra – The Worm is less a concept album than a fully-fledged musical universe, transcending genre and medium. Set in a disorienting anachronistic version of Medieval England – as steeped in dystopian sci-fi fantasy as it is folklore and Old English mythology – it’s part political polemic, part deeply moving psychological journey, and finds frontman Henry Spychalski drawing on his own psycho-spiritual struggles to construct a modern parable about the impotence felt by individuals stuck inside gargantuan, labyrinthine systems of power that they are powerless to change. Henry explains,“We’re told to believe that anxiety and depression are purely material and biological – like a parasitic worm that can be removed with the right treatment. I think that really these conditions reflect the world that surrounds us - like colonies that a far bigger Worm has made in each of us - the psychological havoc wreaked by our inescapable capitalist reality and the looming apocalypse it has created."
HMLTD's second full-length may be short, but The Worm expertly treads the line between fantasy and realism, between pretension and honesty, and wraps it all up before you’ve had time to raise an eyebrow.
A whiplash-inducing U-turn from the modern glam of their debut, The Worm puts the practical skills of HMLTD to the test.
Gospel choir, prog rock and a giant worm eating its way through England… the out-there London art punk band hold nothing back on their second album
The Worm by HMLTD album review: one of UK indie's most divisive bands come good with a genuinely well-executed concept album
Goulding’s distinctive voice spins generic pop into gold, HMLTD considers depression, Billie Marten smashes cherries in the name of love