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 consisting of live, wriggling serpent worms. It’s incredibly disgusting. It’s also the first thing I thought of when I saw the album cover for Gorrch‘s second work, Stillamentum.
Founded in 2010 and based in Cavaso del Tomba in northeastern Italy, Gorrch are the unsettling black metal project of the brotherly duo Chrimsicrin and Droich. Now, a decade after their 2015 debut, Nera estasi, Gorrch plunge into the depths of the abyss, seeking to give voice to the primeval fear and disgust of being covered in wriggling, squirming masses of worms.
Standard black metal isn’t dark enough for Gorrch. Stillamentum is about terror and dread. The opening track, “Nimbus,” wastes no time burying you alive in a narrow wooden box. Bell-like shrieking guitars ring out with a dissonance that threatens mental health, while the loud tempos quickly exhaust your limited oxygen. Droich savagely saws the strings fading off his palms like the erratic, terrifying sprints of cockroaches exploring what’s in the box (you). A calm in the middle of the music inaugurates a spiraling riff, rising like your canyon with deadly dread. Heretical Gregorian chants reveal your abductors as zealots, and every hope of seeing the sun again dies. Mad prayers cut from Chrimsicrin’s throat (“Vorago,” “Angor”), metallic sounds like snapping cables (“Vorago,” “Larvæ”) and ritual percussion (“Phlegma”) keep you locked in this waking nightmare. The blasphemous love child of Gorguts and Imperial Triumphant, Stillamentum is cacophonous, claustrophobic and extremely disturbed.
Building and reinforcing atmosphere through repetition is a common trope in black metal. Stillamentum is no exception, but Gorrch‘s approach makes evaluating it a bit difficult. Each track begins with loud, fast riffs, either caustic or psychotic, that pull me in and demand my attention. Somewhere in the middle third, however, long passages with significantly less instrumental variation take over and carry the song to its end. The result is two or three minutes of relatively repetitive instrumental parts per track. This wasn’t a problem while I was doing chores or playing games or playing Stillamentum in the background – and was actually a gift – as I enjoyed basking in the steady atmosphere, but in focused listens, these stretched sections can halt the intense momentum gained earlier in each song.
That same criticism can be seen mirrored in the structure of Stillamentum as a whole. The front half – “Nimbus,” “Vorago” and “Larvæ” – as well as the closer “Phlegma,” provoke a unique and striking sense of fear. “Cryptæ” and “Angor,” however, are less inspired, giving the album’s quality a parabolic shape. They’re not bad songs by any means. There are parts of each I particularly enjoyed. I liked the tempo change in the middle of “Angor” and the clanging, descending riffs in “Cryptæ,” and the synergy between the ritual chanting and Chrimsicrin’s drum work on both tracks is very effective. Even so, they feel closer to the black metal stereotype than the rest of Stillamentum, their teeth noticeably duller by comparison. As far as the level of individual tracks goes, this structure works well in the background, but under scrutiny, it highlights opportunities for Gorrch to improve their pacing and direction.
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Gorrch shine brightest on their darkest and most dangerous tracks. On Stillamentum, theirs is an abyssal darkness, steeped in shapeshifting terror and dressed in twisted piety. At their most oppressive, Gorrch are exactly the kind of black metal that suits me: suffocating, malicious, dissonant and perhaps a little blasphemous. If I were rating only on the highlights, Stillamentum would score much higher. Unfortunately, those peaks are filled with overly long atmospheric passages, a slightly excessive use of chanted vocals and slightly inconsistent quality. If Gorrch manage to distill their strengths from Stillamentum and refine them to delve even deeper into the void, they’ll discover something truly unspeakable.
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Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp
Worldwide release: January 30, 2026
The review was done by Angry metal guy.
