Scour - S/T

Another day another Phil Anselmo project. I mean you have to love how prolific the man is. After all - this really isn't a Phil Anselmo project either, it was written by members of Cattle Decapitation and Pig Destroyer. Phil just happens to be on vocals, just as Chase Fraser and Jesse Schobel contribute their own parts to round out the lineup. Scour could very easily have just been big name musicians coming together to put out subpar music - and yet it isn't. Scour is fifteen minutes of ferocious grinding black metal quite unlike almost anything else.

While the old school black metal sentiment is certainly there, the band also emphasizes the grinding nature of the riffs on songs like Clot. In many ways Scour is a record defined by the guitar tone. Some of these riffs wouldn't feel out of place on a Cattle Decapitation record if the tuning and tone were very different - and that's part of the beauty of Scour. This is a band who build on a healthy variety of ideas - be it the trudging slaughter of Crooked or the massive chorus and throat wrenching grimace of Tear Gas. Sure - Scour may never tour, or even put out a new album, but this is a hell of a record. 

Scour is a beast on its own. I get the weird impression that it, like many other side projects from all of these bands. I simply don't think that the people involved are going to have the time to make it go as big as it needs to be. That being said - Scour is a hell of a ride and makes me curious to hear more of the bands mainman, Derek Engemann and his clearly brilliant compositional abilities. Scour is a testament to the enduring power of old school grinding black metal, even in 2016, and by Thor is it good.

Find them on Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/scourband/?fref=nf