(Scalp‘s new album Not Worthy of Human Compassion detonated last month with help from Closed Casket Activities. We’re detonating DGR‘s review of it now.)

One of the most consistently difficult challenges in heavy metal writing is to listen to an album like Scalp’s newest release Not Worthy Of Human Compassion and then try to avoid using the word ‘abrasive’ to describe the experience within your first few sentences. Acknowledging this doesn’t make it any easier nor does it absolve one of committing said sin.

Scalp hail from a charged grindcore and powerviolence scene, one whose music was given a turbo-boost in both increasing extremity and publicity during the ‘locked in our houses with just our thoughts’ COVID-era of music. From 2020 on we saw – and this is putting it politely – a lot of projects whose main goal was to reflect the ugliness of humanity at that particular point in its history while also serving as an outlet for an expulsion of emotion that, plainly, had nowhere to go. Many groups that had already been toiling in these mines – which included a lot of crossover with the more nihilistic black metal side of things as well – suddenly had themselves launched into a semi-cultural zeitgeist and used it to full effect.

Needless to say, recent years have become a stellar nursery for albums that are outright caustic, confrontational, overwhelmingly aggressive, and nuclear-hot on the intensity front while often clocking in under the twenty-minute mark. More traditional songwriting would barely be in the fourth song by the time many of these albums have left themselves a smouldering heap on the ground. Not Worthy Of Human Compassion is the newest addition to that particular pile. Continue reading »