SCOUR - Gold Review

SCOUR has once again made the most of the limited time it has for this endeavor. Gold is a testament to brutality, extremity and all things horrific and evil. As I suppose it should be.

Extreme metal supergroup Scour has been issuing its missives in relatively short, sporadic, very violent bursts. Since 2016, the band - ex-Cattle Decapitation guitarist Derek Engemann, Misery Index guitarist/vocalist Mark Kloeppel, Agoraphobic Nosebleed bassist John Jarvis and his brother Adam, drummer with Pig Destroyer/Misery Index/Lockup, and fronted by Philip H. Anselmo - has produced a color-coded trilogy of EPs, "Grey," "Red" and "Black," each offering six songs and roughly 15 minutes of music that mashes up black metal, death metal and grindcore with the utmost ferocity.

This was perhaps both by design and as a matter of practicality - a means of capturing the immediacy and intensity of a band whose rank and file is busy with its myriad other pursuits, with precious little time to focus on Scour. So best to strike while the iron is hot - and strike hard it did indeed with the EPs - then get back to other business.

Oddly enough, Scour's first full-length arrives as Anselmo - the frontman and highest-profile member of the band - is busier than ever, touring both with Pantera and Down, and recording a new Down album. "Gold" presents 13 tracks - including three instrumental interludes - over nearly 40 minutes. Yet in spite of its comparative girth, and Anselmo's other 'distractions,' "Gold" is no less feral or urgent than its predecessors.

Anselmo is his usual "pitbull on a poodle" self behind the mic. The screams, gutturals, phlegmy croaks and infrequent "goblin" cleans - to borrow from Cattle Decapitation frontman Travis Ryan - are delivered with vehemence and purpose, accompanied by a caterwaul of backing vocals.

The often-grotesque, Lovecraft-meets-LaVey screeds describe a litany of horrors and hellish landscapes. Take, for example, "Infusorium": "Skull embedded face up... / Buried feet first... / Faces just above the soil... /Mouth hung open... /Heads twisted backwards, facing up..." or "Invoke": "All hail Satan / Be at one with a hell / Give the body to Satan / Luciferian blood."

The eerie, synth/string-drenched instrumentals - "Ornaments," "Contaminated" and the swarm-of-bees-like "Angels" - accent the sometimes-mystical air here, albeit briefly, and provide a breather from the blitzkrieg of blasphemy and blackness. And that blitz starts right out of the gate with "Cross" as Adam Jarvis' drumroll launches a cacophony of frantic trem guitars, heaving riffs and blast beats. "Blades" follows in a hail of Terrorizer-like surging grind and it's off to the races from there.

"Infusorium" does provide some slower, more atmospheric moments and a graceful, almost Maiden-esque lead break, while the title track, "Coin" and "Invoke" are a bit chunkier and groovier. "Invoke" uses its hookiness to accommodate the "All hail Satan ..." chant noted above, while the more majestic "Coin" is graced by a solo from Exodus/Slayer guitarist Gary Holt.

The rest, as embodied by "Evil," "Devil" and "Hell," is pretty fucking relentless, bringing to mind Marduk, Dark Funeral or Immortal at their most manic. And while that steady pummel might be better suited to the more concentrated bursts of Scour's previous work, it holds up here over the long-ish haul.

Scour has once again made the most of the limited time it has for this endeavor. "Gold" is a testament to brutality, extremity and all things horrific and evil. As I suppose it should be.

4.0 Out Of 5.0