Coining the phrase “WEST COAST DEATH VIOLENCE” as a tagline for your band is as intimidating as it is ballsy, considering the long list of heavy music gods that have influenced legions. But SCALP stands tall, channeling predecessors like Nails, The Endless Blockade, Iron Lung, HM-2 leaning death metal, the work of the Burdette brothers (specifically Deathreat and His Hero is Gone), Craft and Dead in the Dirt, reducing them to a molten plasma that swallows or leaves everything engulfed in flames. In an era where hardcore has abandoned rules but is still a patchwork of pastiche, SCALP is blazing trails and redefining extremity.
With Not Worthy of Human Compassion, the band’s third LP and latest for the venerable Closed Casket Activities, SCALP returns to the catchy, vein-bulging nihilism that marked their debut Domestic Extremity, adding in the technicality found on the follow-up Black Tar. The result is a flag-flown high and an amalgamation of the maximal elements of heavy music– a full-on siege by way of death metal, grind, d-beat and powerviolence seen through the blood-soaked and grimy lens of negative hardcore. Musicality aside, a book called The Lucifer Effect cast a long shadow on the record. Written by Philip Zimbardo, the tome details the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, examining the human factors that could make anyone susceptible to paths into shadow. Nothing is more terrifying than an evil genius, and Not Worthy of Human Compassion is as maniacal as it is learned, calculating and precise as a cut from a scalpel.
Featuring thirteen new tracks clocking in under twenty minutes, SCALP’s grip tightens around the neck until the knuckles go white, emblematic of classic tension and release found on blistering classics like Dystopia’s Human = Garbage, Terrorizer’s World Downfall and Rotten Sound’s Exit. And while those influences are more than evident, the band is also unafraid to mention the influence of less obvious yet more widely-regarded bands. “We took a handful of riffs and made them our own from albums like Slipknot’s Iowa or Nirvana’s In Utero,” admits Devan Fuentes. “I think that there are so many influences that manifested in ways that we weren’t aware of until going back to analyze what we’ve done. For instance, ‘Conspiracy’ has a lead part that uses a wah pedal. So even though the record is by definition probably a hardcore / grindcore LP with plenty of breakdowns, it’s clear that we’ve been influenced by stuff like doom metal and powerviolence along the way.”
SCALP began in the most organic of ways in 2018– after forming a Halloween band for fun, the internal chemistry led to a new death metal-oriented project. And just like anything worth a shit, it took on a life of its own, leading to the debut LP Domestic Extremity recorded by none other than Taylor Young. Drawing on personal experience in addition to the darkness of the pandemic era, the record was a success in a time when the live show wasn’t an option– when the pandemic took hold of our lives and left the world plenty to be pissed off about. The band’s follow up, Black Tar, found the band pushing towards uncharted badlands, developing their sound further and toying with the limitations of genre. So far, SCALP has taken those monolithic recordings to crowds at Sound and Fury Festival, at gigs supporting Nails, Weekend Nachos and The Body, and their own headlining dates.
Not Worthy of Human Compassion, the band’s third LP, is out July 25th on Closed Casket Activities.
