In coordination with the Worm Moon, London collective HMLTD have today shared “The End Is Now” and its accompanying video, the second single to be taken from their ambitious second album The Worm, due Friday 7th April.
Continuing a push in sonic experimentation, “The End Is Now” combines 70’s soul with English folk to set the scene for The Worm, evoking the apocalyptic zeitgeist of the 21st Century and a generation’s psychological terror at the threat of world-ending climate change. “‘The End Is Now’ tells of how the titular Worm was finally awoken by hydraulic fracking of the English countryside, and swallows England whole” explains frontman Henry Spychalski. “The Worm here is both a metaphor for capitalist greed, and the embodiment of a whole generation’s anxiety, dread and fear in the face of ever-looming apocalypse and world-ending natural disasters.”
Directed by Spychalski, the accompanying video for ‘The End is Now’ was visually inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Václav Marhoul’s film The Painted Bird and acts as an origin story for the album’s hero.
The new cut follows “Wyrmlands” in affirming HMLTD as one of the UK’s most ambitious and creative talents. Created over the course of two years with a cast of 47 musicians – including a gospel choir and a 16-piece string orchestra – the collective’s second full-length 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.
