Three years following the first EP Domestic Extremity stir up Scalp their world hatred with the 12 minutes of Black Tar even uglier on torture cells, where usually scene kings like Nails and Full of Hell or talents of the brand Elder Devil or Killing Pace up to mischief.
More mature and punchy, Cole Rodgers (vocals), Cole Sattler (bass), Luke Smith (drums) and Devan Fuentes (guitar) from California bring their visions of agony that hurt the blackened grind with attacks from death metal, power violence, hardcore and crust punk and nihilism not only more mature and more powerful to the point, but also expand the range on a holistic basis: the combat zone of Black Tar is tolerably varied, but dynamic and as if made of one piece, keeping the arc of suspense breathless and yet never deadening.
It starts with the sound, which is particularly dirty and driven to wild brutality, so mangy that provokes the pissed-off aggressiveness in the poisonous sound aesthetics, which in its ugliness ideally takes the Taylor Young trademarks bursting out of the loudspeakers with it: the ideal basis for what is in itself not very original, but extremely effective tweaking songwriting.
Yin wakes up as an intro with rumbling bass and conjuring grunge darkness before nervously reciting sample scaremongering Jesus is God to explode as a bitingly distorted shredder – and to bleed it dry with atonal passion, noise and groove to the slo-mo roller.
Endless Relapse alternates between leaned back flung fury and frenzied pounding speed, finally touching the pit hatefully and riffing ton heavy before Diabetic Necrosis the extremes in tempo amplitudes even amplified, escalating with rage at the beginning and then chanting in the various modes of sluggish infamy. The title track shifts the spectrum, reduced to drums and slogans, to Godflesh-mantra without actually wandering into industrial or mitigating its madly spewed high, but there are facets in the spectrum that have not been part of the band’s cosmos before and make for one of the most memorable standout scenes of the whole package.
Consumer Ethics fires shots in a party mood and barks his riffs while blasting, banging until the strings, which can hardly hang any lower, choke. Pollute is a single speed sin, brakes in the last of its 36 seconds just out of pure malice, and shows the staging power and energy, with which the stick thick Broken Vein bundles the chaotically focused, ideal Maelstrom synergy with Young, allowing twists and turns and outbursts with animal mania, but distilling this so compactly in every display that there are no lengths before the closer drinks as a pounding affront in the musty feedback and the addictive factor of the record provoked with frontal, almost animalistic boldness (and emotionally, of course, without an overly empathetic range). No revolution, but a real beating for the scene!
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