Scaar - The Second Incision
Karmageddon Media - Karma 081 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
Hailing from that perennial hotbed of metal activity, Sweden's Scaar peddle a punchy form crunchy, thrash-inflected modern metal that owes sonic debts to the likes of early Machine Head and Pantera whilst managing to pull some cool songwriting tricks of its own out of the sack. Armed with a particularly grinding, abrasive (in a good way) guitar tone and a vocalist that sounds like he's gargling a mixture of gravel and shattered glass, The Second Incision delivers 8 tracks of impressively heavy and hooky riffage, and one rather misguided outro - but more on that later.
Scaar do wear their influences somewhat on their sleeve - the song structures do seem to bring to mind an adrenalised Pantera, particularly the heavily syncopated grooves and the double-bass rhythms behind the solos and lead breaks, but the weighty production and the quality of the riff-writing and playing on offer means that Scaar manage to avoid coming across as copyists, even when the solo in 'Spitting Morbid Cancer' ends on a distinctly Pantera/Brick Bath-esque note. The surging introduction to 'The Poltergeist Song' with its pace-gathering riffage and stabs of guitar and drums are entirely Scaar's own, and bloody effective they are too.
In fact, they only really trip up on the closing track '14 Years Of Abuse', which consists of 2 minutes and 44 seconds of sinister clean guitar picking and multilayered vocals whispering, seething and singing somewhat trite lyrics in an affected Southern drawl. Somewhat cringeworthy, and not particularly effective. Other than this blip of a track, however, The Second Incision is a satisfyingly destructive metal album.
7/10
Official Scaar Website
Official Karmageddon Media Website
Karmageddon Media - Karma 081 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
Hailing from that perennial hotbed of metal activity, Sweden's Scaar peddle a punchy form crunchy, thrash-inflected modern metal that owes sonic debts to the likes of early Machine Head and Pantera whilst managing to pull some cool songwriting tricks of its own out of the sack. Armed with a particularly grinding, abrasive (in a good way) guitar tone and a vocalist that sounds like he's gargling a mixture of gravel and shattered glass, The Second Incision delivers 8 tracks of impressively heavy and hooky riffage, and one rather misguided outro - but more on that later.
Scaar do wear their influences somewhat on their sleeve - the song structures do seem to bring to mind an adrenalised Pantera, particularly the heavily syncopated grooves and the double-bass rhythms behind the solos and lead breaks, but the weighty production and the quality of the riff-writing and playing on offer means that Scaar manage to avoid coming across as copyists, even when the solo in 'Spitting Morbid Cancer' ends on a distinctly Pantera/Brick Bath-esque note. The surging introduction to 'The Poltergeist Song' with its pace-gathering riffage and stabs of guitar and drums are entirely Scaar's own, and bloody effective they are too.
In fact, they only really trip up on the closing track '14 Years Of Abuse', which consists of 2 minutes and 44 seconds of sinister clean guitar picking and multilayered vocals whispering, seething and singing somewhat trite lyrics in an affected Southern drawl. Somewhat cringeworthy, and not particularly effective. Other than this blip of a track, however, The Second Incision is a satisfyingly destructive metal album.
7/10
Official Scaar Website
Official Karmageddon Media Website
