Scorn - Deliverance Album

Although this passes itself off as a single, I have heard shorter albums (running time is 39'59"). The promo sheet compares their Dub leanings to CAN & early PIL, with the more Rocky comparisons to SWANS & YOUNG GODS. This is so, especially with the previous "Lick Forever Dog" single which, after the title track which was a bright, colourful GODFLESH-sounding thing with GIRA-like voice, tended towards dark, meandering but always adventurous Dub sounds with the JAH WOBBLE-like bass being the only steady motif. A friend of mine compared them to a slightly evil ORB, darker, more sombre, maybe even deadlier, but along similar tracks - steady bass-end rhythms held tight while the environment & atmosphere forever shape shift in changing shapes & hues. The single is quite a different kettle of fish. I had expected the same sound, perhaps advanced a little, but along the same lines. Judging by the titles, I also expected it - rather foolishly in hindsight - to consist of several remixes. Wrong! Instead this might easily pass for a short, dark & grisly concept album, using a single set of feelings as the leaping-off point. Play opens with the acoustically-weird drumming of the title track "Deliverance", seemingly recorded in a cardboard box, then 'excited' by hall reverb. This acts as cursor for the dark, brooding bass, the strange, other-dimension synthetics & fleecy guitar which move in gluey slowness - not so much dream-state as CLIVE BARKER nightmare-state. The music inspires images in the same colour as the cover - a midnight, metallic blue. Vocals are delivered through thick FX, it's humanity drained off & the remains vacuum sealed into a cybernetic shell. It doesn't try & create a tune so much as a disturbing 'feel'. "Deliverance Through Dub" takes the same track & uses creative echoes, 'dead' gates & interesting stereophonic panning to give the mood an even stranger feel. If the title track was darkly dehumanised, this takes a step or two further into arctic strangeness. It takes more or less every element from the title track & mutates to an extreme point, always interesting despite it's linear structure. "Delivered" opens on a clattering cascade of sharp drums, before collapsing into a drifting, amorphous non-beat piece which washes out of the speakers, susurrating like waves washing moon-lit rocks on a cold, potentially stormy night. This might make good incidental music to a film along the lines of "Tough Guys Don't Dance" or "Blood Simple" - chillingly gravid with potential danger. "To High Heaven" resurrects the "Deliverance" theme, pushing needles into the red with an exploding, up-front instrumental version existing in a state of frozen explosion. A noisier, larger, more dense & possibly shorter mix. And the single closes with "Black Sun Rising" - the title already used in the second track - which again is a shapeless, non-beat thing, a disturbing cacophony of voices repeating the title in never-ending downward helices, all combining to create twisted coils of Industrial noise. This shows just what can be done with voice and a few effects! And for those who are interested in the LULL project - see under SENTRAX PRODUCTIONS - "Delivered" & "Black Sun Rising" should give you a little taste of what lies on that album.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.