How Wormhole Created a New Metal Subgenre

Offering up a mad mix of technical-death metal, slam metal, sci-fi video game imagery and SpongeBob SquarePants samples, Baltimore band Wormhole is different in more ways than one.

Back in 2015, guitarist brothers Sanjay and Sanil “Noni” Kumar had an idea to marry all of their favorite things, creating a hybrid offshoot of underground metal music that’s now known as “tech-slam," which uses both the complex guitar melodies of tech death and blunt breakdowns of slam.

“I would say that Wormhole is a very personal musical outlet for me and my brother. We started it together. We came up with the idea together,” Sanjay says. “It’s just music that we wanted to exist that didn’t exist. We’re huge on tech death and then we became huge on slam, and there wasn’t really anything out there doing both. We just made it because we wanted it to exist.”

Simple enough, but combining the styles of such heavy hitters as Defeated Sanity, Ulcerate, Necrophagist and Artificial Brain took some finessing, Sanjay adds, and the self-professed guitar nerd likes to have fun with it.

“The learning curve is: How do you get that shit to mix? How do you combine them? You can’t just do tech-death riff, slam riff, tech-death riff, slam riff. There’s no flow. We’re big on having a smooth, smooth flow, where the sections just slide into another instead of having ‘Oh, here’s the next one. Oh, here’s the next one,’” Sanjay explains. “Getting that flow, trying to combine both sides — it’s extremely difficult.”

The acrobatic guitar work of the Brothers Kumar is technical and difficult to play, and with drummer Matt Tillett, bassist Basil Chiasson and vocalist Julian Kersey, Wormhole has found a unique and distinct sound that just works. On the band's new singles, “System Erase” and “Elysiism,” from upcoming album Almost Human (due September 22 via Season of Mist), the group takes tech-slam to a new level, adding in more atmosphere and spacey interludes.

“It’s not so outwardly in-your-face about being tech-slam. It’s more like tech-slam can also be melancholic and pretty, and just pushing it however you can while still being tech-slam,” Sanjay says of the band’s third record. "This newest album, we are definitely pushing that a little bit. The first single [“System Erase”] is not the techiest and not the slammiest of songs, but it’s still tech-slam.”

Hear it yourself on Tuesday, July 25, when Wormhole plays Trailside Saloon with Analepsy, Cognitive and NecroticGoreBeast. Don’t be surprised if there’s a SpongeBob soundbite here or there, as it is on the song “rA9/Myth,” from 2020 album The Weakest Among Us.

“The other thing that we love together is SpongeBob, seasons one through five, which is the pinnacle of television for me. Every Wormhole album has SpongeBob samples in there,” Sanjay admits with a laugh. "I have a SpongeBob quote always loaded, man.”

Wormhole has SpongeBob merch as well, particularly a black short-sleeved shirt that proudly showcases everyone’s favorite cubic sea creature with the words “TECH SLAM” tattooed across his knuckles beneath the Wormhole logo.

“If there was a merch item that’s keeping Wormhole afloat, it’s that SpongeBob T-shirt,” Sanjay says.

Despite the lighthearted nerdiness of the bandmates, Wormhole isn’t for people with paper skin and glass bones, so don’t expect the five-piece to get up there and break out the “F.U.N. Song” or any other Bikini Bottom banger. Wormhole's planet is a more sinister fictional land akin to Rock Bottom, where Kersey’s pig-squeal screams reign supreme and Noni and Sanjay experiment with wild licks and riffs that will leave listeners dizzy if they try to keep up. That’s what tech-slam is all about, Sanjay says, although inspiration, of course, emerges from places outside of the metal confines.

“I’m supposed to say you can expect tech-slam because it encompasses the whole band,” he adds before pausing and elaborating. "On Planet Wormhole, you can expect whatever we’re feeling, whatever that might be. It’s a very personal outlet, so every album is going to be identifiable by whatever I’m vibing on whenever I’m writing it, and it’s always going to change.

“Literally anything can happen so long as it can be labeled tech-slam," he adds. "Literally anything.”

Wormhole, 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, Trailside Saloon, 10360 Colorado Boulevard. Tickets are $15.