Scorn – Evanescence

This ground braking Album was my introduction to electronic non-rock music. A gem of a release that is jammed with layer upon layer of darkly lush beauty. I've listened to many, many releases and new artists since and Evanescence has lost none of it's power. One of the best!

This album, launched upon the world with the legend 'Redefining Ambient Dub' stickered to the CD case, met with a surge of enthusiastic praise including 'Album Of The Week' in either NME or MM and all manner of accolades. Much as I'd love to cut against the grain, the handful of years since it's release have failed to tarnish it's veneer. For those of you with lives so empty as to not already own this album, I'll attempt to convince you that your record collection has a gaping, Evanescence-shaped hole in it which demands an Evanescence-shaped filler. This album's strength lies not in it's tonal variety - repetition is very much to the forefront - but rather in the sheer relentless drive of the music. That they chose to keep it's BPMs pretty much uniform adds to it's solid, unrelenting status. When you consider that this is a dance album born out of the ashes of Thrash-Meisters NAPALM DEATH and sonic torturers GODFLESH, you'd hardly expect gutless electro-noodling. And you're in no way disappointed. From the doomy chemical spill intro of the albums premier track "Silver Rain Fell" to the screaming silence when the final track finishes, this outer-limits groove grips you and just wont let go. The tracks are long and integral variety kept to a minimum. But it's Train-Driver-Dead-At-The-Wheel impetus is what hammers it's strength home, and what could have overstayed it's welcome departs at just the right moment. Often monochrome - more often colour-drenched, this avoids clichéd electronic pyrotechnics and concentrates on relentless drumming, BULLEN's PIL-simplistic-but-effective bass, a cornucopia of stolen and contaminated samples, and PLOTKIN's other-world Industrial guitar layers. Redefining Ambient Dub? Don't be fooled - this is a cultural cul-de-sac with no in or out - I cannot imagine where it came from and with BULLEN's departure, never led where it promised to go. For this album the line up was MICK HARRIS & NICK BULLEN with JIM PLOTKIN on guitar, NICK GARNETT on didgeridoo and JON WAKELIN credited with 'additional programming'.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.

This is one of the best albums in my record collection, no matter what genre we're speaking of. It was a revelation for my ears when it was released in 1994, with its breathtaking blend of drum machines, guitar loops, scary synths, deep bass and chorus-drenched vocal parts. This was my alternative soundtrack to the classic game Quake, as it prefectly blended with the blood-dripping and gothic setting of this game. I recommend this highly to anyone ready to explore an angst-ridden, dub-filled universe. A record to relax and go numb inside to!