Thursday 11 June 2020

The Scum - Dead Eyes EP



Labels: Self-Released/Wild Noise Productions

Formats: Digital

Release Date: 01 May 2020


Tracklist:


1. Dead Eyes (Feat. Dave Ingram of Benediction)

2. No Forgiveness


I'm sticking to my review a day policy this week. I may write a second one today but it depends on time. Also, on a separate note, the Blogger platform has been updated again and they've changed the format of the editing tool that I use to write my posts and to be honest, it's not as good and quite why they decided to remove the built-in spellcheck functionality I'll never know. Rant over. 


Anyway, this little review features Colombian death metallers The Scum. They recently released a new two-song EP, which features the vocals of Dave Ingram of Benediction on the title-track. The band originally formed in 2013 as Scum and released their debut EP Self-Destructive Race in 2015. They became The Scum in 2017 and followed the name change with their debut album Ashen a year later. Dead Eyes is notable because it was mixed at Sunlight Studios in Sweden by Thomas Skogsberg.


Here we go. Straight away The Scum whips up a storm with ‘Dead Eyes’. It’s a song filled with old-school riffs and precise drumming. The overall sound on Dead Eyes is quite clean actually and the vocals take the lead in the mix. When they rest, the whole band comes to the fore with some great soloing and neck-snapping tempos.


Second song ‘No Forgiveness’ is a lot faster with elements of thrash and grind being thrown in for good measure. At times, it seems that the vocals are struggling to keep pace with the instrumentation but that’s only very temporary. There’s a mix of low growls and higher-pitched shrieks here and also a lot more atmosphere, especially during the mid-section. 


This is a very solid EP, but to me it feels like The Scum were holding back somewhat on the title-track. It was a different story on ‘No Forgiveness’, which shows how extreme these guys can be. They’re writing more material as we speak, so hopefully they’ll kick on from this with added extremity.


You can stream and download Dead Eyes below:-


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