Ahead of the arrival of their new album – The Worm – due this Friday, 7th April, London collective HMLTD have today shared the record’s title track, “The Worm“.
Conceptually and musically, “The Worm” is the centrepiece of the band’s new full length. It’s the clearest distillation of its two major themes: the powerlessness of individuals stuck and suffering inside systems of power that they are unable to change, and the spiritual struggle to overcome one’s inner demons.
“‘The Worm’ is by far and away the most ambitious song we’ve made to date,” tells frontman Henry Spychalski. “We recorded it with a 16-piece string orchestra in Athens and, later, a small gospel choir in London. It was inspired by Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. For the cacophonous outro which closes the song, we asked the orchestra to play the part with the ‘sensazione de un verme’ (the sensation of a worm). The lyrics are the clearest admission that the album is a symbol of my depression and battle with it.”
The track arrives alongside a new video directed by Spychalski. Set in Wyrmlands, the imagined future in which The Worm has swallowed England and society is split between those who support it, and those who have chosen to resist.
“The video for ‘The Worm’ shows the final stand of the resistance,” notes Henry. “We shot the video in an abandoned, desecrated church in London’s East End to emphasise the spiritual nature of the song and its themes of struggle and salvation. In the video, I wanted to show man’s inner demons physically manifested as real, living, breathing entities – the Worm within man.
It was inspired by the films of the polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski, and in particular his unfinished masterpiece On The Silver Globe. The chorus of extras which make up the congregation are all fans of ours who answered a general callout on Instagram, without whom the video would not have been possible – so our eternal gratitude to them here cannot be overstated”
