Vae Solis

Album review

Mick Harris' first album with Nick Bullen as Scorn produced a debut that was perfectly appropriate for its label home on Earache. Perhaps an oversimplification, but Vae Solis is notable for partially being a last working out of Harris' death/thrash jones in a slightly more conventional sense -- not entirely a throwback, but certainly one with its moments. Here, Bullen's roaring vocals have an obvious kinship with Justin Broadrick's snarls from Godflesh (all the more fitting since Broadrick contributes guitars to the album); the sense of ambient space that would grow stronger and stronger here turns up mostly as occasional dropouts in the mix or slabs of echo and reverb slathered over the words. One notable exception is "Deep In -- Eaten Over and Over," with a truly funereal pace and a suffused sense of dread and murk. Comparisons at the time to the early groan and doom efforts of Swans, for instance, were well considered. Scorn's obsessive focus on structure and pounding drumbeats also suggests another close parallel -- Robert Hampson, similarly shifting gears in the early '90s from Loop's rampages to Main's rhythm-is-rhythm portraits. Clattering extra percussion samples herald "Walls of My Heart" and crop up in "On Ice"; at the same time, there are quicker thrash moments like the start of "Hit," which -- while hardly Napalm Death hyperspeed -- still show a lingering connection to older approaches. Song titles convey the basic thematic obsessions -- again, not all that far removed from Godflesh: "Suck and Eat You," "Thoughts of Escape," "Scum After Death." Then there's what was a single from the album, though "Lick Forever Dog" probably wasn't going to trip off the tongues of many DJs. Still, it's one of the better songs, Bullen's vocals more direct and less treated over a pretty good death-march herky-jerky arrangement.
© Ned Raggett /TiVo