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THORN
Nebulous Womb Of Eternity

Transcending Obscurity (2025)
Rating: 8/10

Once again combing unfathomable squalid depths, Brennen Westermeyer (otherwise known as Thorn) squeezes out a fourth full-length album as if it were pus from an infected wound.

Phoenix, Arizona-based Thorn inhabits a subterranean realm which reeks of damp, yet feeds off its own mould spores. However, as soon as opener ‘Ooze Maelstrom’ hits like a foul gust, those harmful particles are whisked into the air as a foul swirling tornado. The pungent layer of gloom always remains though, the thick rushing riffs and billowing vocals operating within a horizon of pea soup fog and dismal vapours. Heavy amounts of condensation form on the windows as Thorn combines those corporeal gushes with stabbing, gnashing rhythms.

‘Entombed In Chrysalis’ is the stale essence of the Thorn sound, slithering through the murky strands of the rancid scuzzy bass and lumbering like some slimy golem drowning in fetid syrup. Like some mucus vacuum, the album filters all that is putrid, catching offal and pustulent fibres in its gloopy web and funnelling it back as this dank, purulent gas.

‘Zombifying Mold’ features a riff which boils like a cauldron of congealed clots and then the blast beats act as the volatile blender, spattering the walls with chunks of gore-drenched meat. It’s very much archetypal new/old death metal, flabby with stodge as each turbulent waterfall of riffs cascades like boiling liquid melting the flesh of those below.

‘Quartersawn Remains’ bludgeons with sickening weight, similarly matched to the emphatic slugfest of the title track with its gruelling, seeping movements. ‘Haunting Gale’ comes littered with angular jabs and chilly vocals straight from the cavern as noxious fumes are spewed from the grim riffs. As expected, there’s no staggering amounts of variety, all musicality presented is weighed down by blankets of overwhelming gloom. The staleness pervades the air with each despairing thud, but time and time again the clogged pipes are flushed through by the hasty gasps of sepulchral air.

Nebulous Womb Of Eternity is the obvious next step for Thorn, a stifling domain densely populated by anomalous organisms and cacophonous vortex’s beyond our natural phenomena. In other words, these are eternal slums only to be explored by those of miry minds and grubby hands.

Neil Arnold

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