Above: The cover of Worm Ritual. Art by Matt Putrid.
“With the album, I wanted to get rid of the juvenalia of the earlier stuff, and just focus on really good songs,” says Zack. “There’s still gross stuff in there, but it's difficult to offend someone these days without being really mean, and that's just not fun for me. We've never written about violating consent or causing anyone harm, but there were some songs which, when read in a certain light, I didn't lie. I really dislike that side of a lot of late ‘90s death metal that's all about raping women. So this time around, it’s still gross, but not purposefully provocative."
By September 23rd, 2018, except for the recent weakness in his one arm, things were looking up for Zack.
That morning, he had the seizure. By the next day, he could barely move the left side of his body.
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After EMTs brought Zack to the hospital, he was given another MRI. This time, as he puts it, “they found shit in there.”
“They said I had a seizure because there’s inflammation in my brain,” he says. “So I figured it would be a few days and I’d go home...but then the weakness started to really increase in the left side of my body, to where I couldn’t go home because I wouldn’t have been able to get around. I basically couldn’t even sit up in bed. I had all of no strength on that side. I could barely move my left arm, and my foot on the left side was totally useless.”
The initial treatment was a huge dose of steroids to reduce inflammation, but that came with its own perils. “Steroids reduce inflammation, but the make you fucking crazy. I kept trying to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I’d fall because I couldn’t walk. Every time, in my head, I thought, ‘I can totally do this’, but it happened two nights in a row.”