Before Worm leader Phantom Slaughter begins writing his “necromantic black doom” music, he needs to get inside the mind of a vampire.
The South Florida-born musician often works on “evil vampiric” compositions in his off-grid cabin as the erotically fang-bearing films of cult director Jean Rollin flicker silently in the background. A six-foot cardboard ghoul from the tabletop game Castle Ravenloft looms nearby as Slaughter conjures his dark art. The results — songs bursting with midnight-bleary melodicism, grim symphonic synths and blood-lusting lyricism — make up Worm’s latest album, Necropalace.
Inspired by the bleak sounds and DIY ethos of scene legends like Darkthrone and Mayhem, Slaughter started Worm as a solitary, studio-only black-metal experiment more than a decade ago. Following the underground hype surrounding gloom-coated early releases like 2021’s Foreverglade, he grew the project into a caped-and-corpse-painted live band. Worm soon hit the road with death-metal practitioners like Gatecreeper and Frozen Soul while expanding its ranks with new players including guitarist Wroth Septentrion and Necropalace guest shredder Marty Friedman. All of it has brought Worm a devoted legion of familiars.
While rooted in role-playing games and B-movie series like Subspecies — whose creators Worm partnered with on a series of campy, dungeon-trudging music videos — Slaughter’s fixation on vampires isn’t just about ghoulish theatrics. For him, the undead symbolize a deeply human fear: eternal isolation. Growing up as a metal-and-horror-obsessed loner in the Sunshine State, he understood that feeling all too well.
“A vampire is alone for thousands of years. He watches his loved ones die,” Slaughter says on a call from his current lodging outside of a small city in the North Georgia wilderness. Even as Worm’s audience continues to grow, that sense of solitude remains central to how he lives and works. Most days, Slaughter is entirely on his own. Even his songwriting sessions with Montreal-based Septentrion happen over Zoom.
“When I think of vampires, I feel like they’re not friendly. They’re not really around a lot of people,” he continues. “The word ‘isolation’ comes to mind. So, I had to live that way in order to make this record honest, from a lyrical standpoint.”
Slaughter’s musical journey started in a far less secluded and sinister setting. He first experienced rock music watching his guitarist father rip into ZZ Top riffs at home, and later recalls having his mind blown after hearing Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” at a laser-tag arena. In his late teens, his tastes turned extreme after discovering Until the Light Takes Us, the documentary exploring the violent early ’90s Norwegian black-metal scene. Soon he was binging interviews with cult figures like Emperor’s Ihsahn and Darkthrone’s Fenriz and scouring blogs for obscure demos.
As he dug deeper online, he realized that many black-metal projects were being put together by solitary artists. Since his friends didn’t share his musical interests, that DIY spirit intrigued the budding musician. He christened himself Phantom Slaughter and forged ahead with Worm on his own.
“I shut everything out around me,” he recalls of Worm’s genesis. “I had friends at that time, but they would slowly start to wither. I was 19 or 20, and everyone started going to bars. It was more important to me to stay in and work on the Worm demo. Every time I went out, I was like, ‘This is a waste of time. I’d rather just be making music in my room.’”
Phantom Slaughter
Slaughter recalls the sense of empowerment he felt while teaching himself to play guitar and synthesizer. He even bought a drum set to blast through Worm’s first “messy” demo, 2014’s The Deep Dark Earth Underlies All. “I was terrible at it,” he admits of his primitive percussive skills. “But with the black-metal ideology, you can do anything. There’s no roadblocks. Ignorance is bliss!”
When it came time to unleash Worm’s primordial horrors on the world, Slaughter began wheat-pasting posters around South Florida to promote his Deep Dark demo — copies of which he’d been hiding in local cemeteries. “These were hangout spots [where] kids [would] do drugs at night,” he explains of the unconventional campaign. “And I knew that there were graves that were broken that you could easily put stuff in.”
As Worm’s reputation spread organically, Slaughter began bringing in other players to help tighten up the project’s sound. Drummer Equimanthorn joined for 2017’s Evocation of the Black Marsh, while guitarist Nihilistic Manifesto added solos to Foreverglade, Worm’s first release through 20 Buck Spin. That label connection also introduced Slaughter to Septentrion, a kindred spirit who was on the roster with funeral doom force Atramentus. The Canadian guitarist joined Worm in 2021, appearing on the Bluenothing EP the following year and most recently co-writing Necropalace.
Doomvana
Septentrion is a virtuosic fretboard freak, and his playing across Necropalace — Worm’s debut for Century Media Records — runs the gamut from viciously-trilled black metal to an Andy LaRocque-styled approach to neoclassical shred. On the steamy solo for “Blackheart,” he leans into the duo’s increasing love of ’80s pomp like Whitesnake. Necropalace also marks the first Worm album not to feature Slaughter on guitar, a shift that reflects just how far the once-solitary founder has come.
“My playing has gotten better because of this,” he says of now trading riffs behind the scenes with Septentrion. “I’m a very private person, but I can find friendship in this band. Our personalities mesh very well together, and that’s what’s made it work.”
On “Witchmoon: The Infernal Masquerade” — Necropalace’s epic, 14-minute finale — Septentrion dukes it out with another ripping guitarist: Marty Friedman. The moment came about unexpectedly, after the ex-Megadeth shredder sent the band an enthusiastic Instagram DM praising their music. Slaughter, who notes that Megadeth’s Rust in Peace was stuck in the CD player of his first car, took a chance and asked him to contribute to a dueling solo section. Friedman came through and delivered a flurry of extra melodies across the track.
“I get to sing over a Marty Friedman lick,” he says with wonder. “It’s the coolest thing in the world.”
Necropalace’s crunching, lovelorn “Blackheart” finds Slaughter flipping between a feral screech and a goth-rock croon to channel a castle-bound Count’s “endless suffering” and eternal solitude. But as Worm continue to expand — with new bandmates, high-profile guests and tours to come in 2026 — his life looks less lonely than it once did.
“Through this, I’ve found genuinely good people that actually care about me — and not just in a musical sense,” Slaughter says, adding that his goal now is to “keep this band alive as long as I possibly can.”
“It’s extremely inspirational to find like-minded individuals that really care about this in the same way as me,” he continues. “It feels like there is life on this planet. That’s changed me for the positive.”