It’s easy to feel like you’re alone, especially when hard times strike. Or when you experience failure or loss. All we truly know is our own perspective, and it’s very understandable to get lost in the negativity and the feeling that everything is piling on our chest. Maybe it is, but to be able to share that burden with someone else can make the lift a little easier.
That’s the primary theme of “The Promise of Rain,” the second record from experimental black metal force Scarcity, and it’s a collection that fucks with one’s brain based on the sonic assault that attacks you from moment one. But ultimately, the messages here are encouraging, even uplifting if you grasp the point that suffering and struggling does not have to be an individual sport. The newly expanded version of the group brings together artists who worked with such diverse forces as Pyrhhon, Depravity, Sigur Ros, Krallice, and Glenn Branca Ensemble, and this band—vocalist Doug Moore, guitarists Brendon Randall-Myers and Dylan Dilella, bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, drummer Lev Weinstein—pours everything into these six tracks and 40 minutes of mind-tangling madness. It’s a much difference concept than what we heard on debut “Aveilut” and shows a different side of this beast that has an enthralling future ahead of them.
“In the Basin of Alkaline Grief” almost immediately induces panic, manic guitars playing in a non-stop loop that makes your mind topple, Moore’s shrieks matching the insanity flowing through the space. It feels like an emergency siren gone wrong, the fury increasing, wails boiling, and a thick haze enveloping. “Scorched Vision” runs 11:25 and launches with encircling guitars, chaotic energy meeting with a psychotic front, dizzying heaviness making the room spin out of control. Gutting, corrosive howls mix in with the chugging, trudging playing, the bass clobbering as the intensity ramps up all over again. The playing tingles and strikes amid group calls, an electric riff buries itself behind the wall of sound, and the uneasiness bleeds into instrumental cut “Subduction.” There, the bass plods, and the increasing heat makes everything steadily more uncomfortable. A smokescreen thickens as the guitars take on tornadic chaos, ending in a gasp of exhaust.
“Undertow” continues the guitars from the opener that feel like they’re trying to peel open your skull, shrieks raining down, other calls feeling detached from reality. The guitars agitate before a brief calm settles in, and the bass slithers from there, coarse growls picking open scabs. “Venom & Cadmium” arrives with an enthusiastic riff, shrieks raining fire, and the playing digging in further, group calls rousing you and forcing your attention. The pace keeps drilling deeper, nasty calls lacerating, the tempo slicing in place, aching as you pour sweat from the humidity. A strange glaze accumulates and hangs over everything, an unsettlingly dream passage fading softly. The closing title track erupts with gurgling growls and a mangling energy, the agony multiplying dangerously. The band stokes progressive fires, the path toying with you, frenzied guitars splattering alongside sickening wails that emit power. The bass ripples as apocalyptic energy increases, settling into a fog and expiring.
It’s easy to feel alone in our grief and struggles, but most of us are a part of an interwoven support system that gives us strength when we’re at our lowest. “The Promise of Rain,” while threatening sounding at first, also is a reminder to not get too ensconced in our pain and agony as we have other people around us who can help with the burden. No one’s life ever will be easy, but with reminders like these (as terrifying as they may sound), hopefully more people will remember to reach out and ask for a hand in facing turmoil.
For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/scarcity.noise
To buy the album, go here: https://nowflensing.com/collections/flenser-releases
For more on the label, go here: https://nowflensing.com/
Meat Mead Metal 