Scorn
Colossus

LA RECENSIONE

It is precisely thanks to albums like this one that Anglo-Saxon "heavy" music (take the term in a veeeery broad sense) is still remembered and treated with respect. The respect owed to artists like Lee Dorrian, Justin Broadrick, and of course, Mick Harris.

Scorn was born as a semi-industrial project by another former member of Napalm Death. But unlike the Doom of Cathedral and the "swansian" sound of Godflesh, they offer something absolutely unusual as well as utterly brilliant. After a debut still full of metallic atrocities (the famous "Vae Solis"), Harris decides to shift towards dub, into the darker realms of electronic, certainly into industrial but even towards forms of ambient that evoke artists far removed from the English background.

The primary influence is the PIL of John Lydon. Their music, already extreme for the time, is cannibalized and dissected, to then be reassembled in a schizoid manner. From the distinctive dub of albums like "Second Edition" to minimal and annihilating sounds. The name neither betrays the intentions nor the outcome of the work.

It is indeed a black, heavy and threatening colossus that you are about to hear. Tons of electronics, filtered distortions, sluggish and hypnotic rhythms. Almost like a sort of Massive Attack from the "Mezzanine" period, corrupted, mind you, with a heavy and apocalyptic attitude.

Industrial metal? A label far too reductive for such a work! In fact, there's everything.

Many of you already know "Colossus". Those who have never had the fortune to approach it, well, do so without wasting time.

Certainly one of the most significant releases of the '90s. And I'm not exaggerating.