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.

Scorn's last album for Earache, 1996's Logghi Barogghi was the second album from the Mick Harris solo version of Scorn, and continues in the largely instrumental dubscape direction that the project began with Gyral. The fourteen tracks are more experimental versions of Scorn's grim pounding dub, more spacious than ever, the echoing, throbbing beats treated with harsh effects and prominently pounding away at the forefront of the mix, while rattling dub effects and minimal drones writhe between the staccato rhythms. There are blown-out rhythms that foreshadow the grinding beats that dubstep would claim for itself a decade later, and more minimalist and subdued beatscapes, and descents into wheezing trip-hop with bleating trumpet-like samples stretched out into streaks of bizarre mewling ("Spongie"); "Out Of" is one of the most powerful tracks, a huge stuttering dubstep-like groove pushed into the red, layered with Mick's warped processed vocals and a fractured guitar melody, while "Black Box II" uncoils massive murky underwater doom-dub beneath a swirling black sky. The crushing "Nut" ranks as one of Scorn's heaviest, another distorted breakbeat and buzzing overdriven synth line, bass-heavy and ominous, and somewhat similar to Kevin Martin's Ice, and the minute-long title track even ventures into a mutant jungle seizure. The strangest of all of Scorn's Earache-era albums, this is still a highly recommended platter of heavy industrial dub.