Scour-Black

Another prominent supergroup (if we count Phil Anselmo’s many musical projects as such), Scour, which started back in 2015 and only put out two EPs and a Bathory cover barely eclipsing a half hour of material total until this month, is the Pantera frontman’s intended venture into black metal.

I say “intended” because it’s not as pure of a black metal venture as the genre’s finicky purists might grant it; for my money, there’s no point really deliberating it pedantically. It’s black metal. But the various members’ pedigrees with grindcore and death metal from experience with bands like Misery Index, Pig Destroyer, and Cattle Decapitation do show through here, and while that would lead naturally to the suggestion that what Scour produce would be under the banner of blackened death metal, I don’t think that label really captures it.

Epecially on Black, whose sound is intensely focused on sinister darkness and evil, just whose players can’t help themselves from breakneck speed and nasty growls, Scour are clearly playing black metal. It just happens to be significantly more furious than your average black metal record these days where speed has kind of fallen to the wayside in a relinquishing of that aspect of the music at its most extreme to death metal.

Black plays much like a Watain album just with even faster elements and more death growls influenced by Cattle Decapitation’s semi-blackened deathgrind. There’s also the occasional groove-focused section like the rhythmic riff of “Propaganda” and the delicious palm-muted groove of “Flames”, but it never feels unlike black metal.

Regarding Anselmo and potential valid concerns about his (hopefully just drunken) racist shenanigans (to put it generously) potentially coming through in the lyrics, there’s nothing to really worry about here. The guy has clearly been loving him some Portal lately (as shown by his wearing their t-shirt in the bands promo photos), and the lyrics here mainly just mimic the heady, ultra-abstract (kinda nonsensical) surrealism that that band employs.

I think this project’s brevity is a clever move on the band’s part, leaving a thirsting for more, making me really hopeful for a full-length sometime in the future, because this extremely grindcore-influenced, and rather fresh, approach to black metal is so savory and addictive.

8/10