Scorn – Colossus

Just picked this up off Ebay, either the tracklist is borked or the final track is missing. The cassette ends with White Irises Blind.

This was the first Scorn album I had ever heard and it turned me into a crazed fan. At first it had to grow on me because at the time I was a huge Godflesh and Skinny Puppy fanatic (still am) and I had never heard anything quite like Colossus. Even though it had heavy industrial ingredients, I had issues in the beginning getting used to the very low bass/dub undertones. Slowly, Scorn captured my attention and eventually I had purchased everything of their's I could find. Till this day (20 years later), Colossus is still in constant rotation. You will never hear anything quite like it. This is the common ground album... It literally has the perfect ingredients of Industrial, Coldwave, Dub, Drone, Dark Ambient - highly experimental genius work!

SCORN are NICHOLAS JAMES BULLEN & MICHAEL JOHN HARRIS with occasional help from JON WAKELIN. This is the first album length recording I have heard by SCORN, although the "Deliverance" single qualified as a mini album at least. "Endless" shows the Dub side of their sound off to good effect, degrees of GODFLESH re-woven into the most stark, bleak Reggae skeleton possible, removing any dance elements, replacing them with the coldness of a Winter scrapyard. Cloaked in huge amounts of strange effects, this is an ever-changing, ever-listenable track. "Crimson Seed" builds on sharp drums, escaping the initial reverse bell arpeggios into another broodingly stark piece using the ponderous hunting-beast stealth of label-mates GODFLESH, then taking away the Rock carapace for a more electr(on)ic sound. "Blackout" has a more Industrial sound to it, the drums having machine logic. Over these are layers of distorted guitar, harsh electronics & deep, sonorous vox. The music inclines more towards a medium-paced Rock, albeit a Rock bought kicking & screaming into the 21st Century. "The Sky Is Loaded" is a lot more like M.J.HARRIS's LULL work, a series of machine-like loops building & decaying in audio evolution - perhaps a little lighter. Moving from one moodscape to another es along strange corridors of noise. "Nothing, Hunger" returns to the hard, bright beat of their dance music. This tracks fucked-up flange guitar reminds me a lot of early CHROME set to their post-Dub dance. Through semi-improvisation, they create an ever-changing mood - just so typically SCORN. "Beyond" gradually grows from strange noises & reverse echoes & snatches of spoken voice into a slow, ponderous monster, it's languid lethergy full of atmosphere. "Little Angel" swells on several layers & chunks of Industrial sound, a moody film theme from some futuristic, post-Civilization tale. "White Irises Blind" builds it's understated tune on wandering bassline & crisp, snappy drums while guitar creates wiry tracery & various reverse FX & samples combine into a colourful slow mood dance. "Scorpionic" reminds me a lot of the "Deliverance" single - deliberately live-sounding drums work across a rhythmic structure not unlike a more muscular, more relaxed variation on eary CABARET VOLTAIRE sound. "Night Ash Black" prowls on post-Reggae Dub bass & drums, witha soporific vocal approach. It has the confidence of inevitability which a hunting predator might have. "Sunstroke" closes the album, a simple thing built on thick chiming sounds, which grows in a series of loops into a gradually more & more complicated piece of music. This is where Classical Minimalism & Industrial Noise meet. Apparently there's a lot of this sort of thing in the live show. With MICK HARRIS quitting live drums for control of the mixing desk, expect more of this sort of thing, only darker..

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.