That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.

Released in 1997, Deliverance was actually a collection of one of Scorn's earliest releases (the Deliverance 12" from 1992) and three remix versions of "Exodus" (from the Evanescence album) by the techno/dub collective Sabres Of Paradise. Released around the same time as their industrial/dub/thrash debut Vae Solis, the Deliverance 12" featured the stripped down, throbbing industrial-dub that Scorn would continue to experiment with throughout the 90's. The demonic processed goth-moans, watery snares, rumbling industrial break beats and waves of sinister dark ambience that sweep across the title track "Deliverance" sets the stage for the dark crushing dub that the group would explore on Colossus, while the following tracks mutate "Deliverance" into a series of more abstract soundscapes: "Deliverance Through Dub", like tht title suggests, is a skeletal dubbed-out reworking of the track that stretches out for almost twelve minutes, and "Delivered" is a spacious slab of dark ambient drift, industrial clatter and sparse beats almost totally devoid of vocals; "To High Heaven" takes the pounding skittering beat and piles on the distortion, blowing it out, creating a crushing speaker-shredding doom-dub blast, and "Black Sun Rising" jettisons the beats entirely, looping the vocals over and over into a hallucinatory noise-streaked dronescape. Scorn's endtime dub has rarely been as nightmarish sounding as it is here.

But the "Exodus" remixes from Sabres Of Paradise take this sound in a different direction, starting with the dreamy loopy dreamdrift of "Mix 1", an almost Tim Hecker-like smear of washed out melodic drone and blurred noise, through which emerge bits of ominous Tangerine Dream-like synth and sparse industrial percussion; the second remix is more dark ambient in tone, a short soundtrack-like bit of looped bass, minimal electronics, minor key synth, and creepy whispered vocals drifting across the background; and the fourth is a trancey techno mutation flecked with electronic orchestral hits and underwater effects.