SCALD - "Vermiculatus" - Reviews

[unhinged]

Terrorizer August 2006

SCALD
Vermiculatus

Scald's deomos have gained respectgul nods from Terrorizer across nearly ten years, and signing to a label daring enough to take them onboard has finally given the band space to further the ingeniously contorted creative development that has compromised not one iota of individuality in that decade. This unique babd's cold, spacey and decidedly extraterrestrial take on post-grind is truely singular, with each release managing to communicate a darker and more cerebral concept than the one before it. 'Vermiculatus', a single track, 47 minute exploration of the mind's darker recesses sees the band drop thier usual gnashing vocal in order to deliver a crushing instrumental timeline of birth and decay, overarched by a sonic, artistic and conceptual metaphor within which lies a sunless microcosm of futility.
Roughly divisable into two halves - a crunching atmospheric evolution of thier grind past, then it's reassembly through ambient noise - the sibilant, wormlike coursing and tunnelling of its many movements, before a final bleak release, is essential for its very diference.
8.5

just typed it out

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

no I'm not english

besides I'm still pissed off with them not reviewing our last album

Any particular reason them not reviewing the previous album?

Oh,I found a Polish review,it gave the album an 8! want me to put it up here,don't know if I'm alowed to do so? it hasn't been posted yet I think.

 

[unhinged]

Any particular reason them not reviewing the previous album?

Oh,I found a Polish review,it gave the album an 8! want me to put it up here,don't know if I'm alowed to do so? it hasn't been posted yet I think.

Well I'd certainly appreciate it
I'm sure Emi would too.

I'd also appreciate any proper translations to english of the non-english ones
I really should get the scald site updated ...

about the terrorizer thing
I don't know why they didn't, we sent 2 copies
+ they reviewed the 3 releases before that very favorably too
so who knows?

 

[unhinged]

Zero Tolerance (print mag UK)

Not so much an album as a project, Vermiculatus is an ambitious artistic expression from Northern Ireland’s Scald. Once again taking the concept of the parasitic worm as a metaphor for various mental conditions, Scald have produced an audio-visual piece which narrates the story of a human life from start to finish. The audio part of the project is a single instrumental track and is itself divided into two sections. The first is a complexly constructed full band performance which twists and clashes as it traces the interaction of the conscious and sub-conscious mind. This is followed by a more ambient piece which is essentially a reconstruction of the performance part. The visual element of the project comes courtesy of ‘Vermiculatus B1’, a profoundly unsettling short animated film which further explores the project’s concept and is accompanied by another re-working of the soundtrack. Unsurprisingly, Vermiculatusisn’t the kind of work that can be dipped in an out of in the search of a quick musical fix. Instead it requires, nay demands, your undivided attention. Hard work, but well worth it.
calum harvie 4

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

Alright,here you go,I hope it works like this,if it's a no go Emi can always delete it... It is fun to do this..

Scald (uk) "Vermiculatus" 2cd'2006
Aural music/code666

Ale wkręca ten album. Zawsze miałem jakąś słabość do jednoutworowych produkcji, a taką jest właśnie "Vermiculatus". Jeden długi, całkowicie instrumentalny kawałek stanowiący połączenie czegoś w rodzaju eksperymantalnego sludge doom i ambient. Nie znałem wcześniej muzyki, pochodzącego z Irlandii Płn. Scald, ale z tego co się orientuję to grali kiedyś grind - teraz z tego zostało tylko jakieś wspomnienie tu i tam. Główną esencję muzyki stanowią natomiast rozwlekłe motywy kojarzące się z rzeczami typu Isis i im podobnym - raz wolne i ciężkie, kiedy indziej zahaczające albo o psychodeliczny doom, albo właśnie z rzadka uderzające w rejony stylistycznych korzeni zespołu. Wychodzi z tego doskonała relaksacyjna ścieżka dźwiękowa, z której bardzo stopniowo sączy się pokręconą, wciągająca energia, która w drugiej części albumu przeistacza się w swoje odwzorowanie w formie czysto ambientalnej. Dobra rzecz - nie tylko dla miłośników ziołowych wspomagaczy, ale dla wszystkich poszukujących dobrych eksperymantalnych produkcji, w których nie dominuje elektronika.

adres: http://www.scald.me.uk
Olo - 8 wersja do druku

edit: I forgot the link
http://www.masterful-magazine.com/

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

I have no idea what they say,I'm NOT polish.. and I'm not even sure if there's any English translation either..

edit: well I,ve been thinking about this translation thing,I happen to know a guy who's polish I could ask if he wants to translate it into english,unfortunately he just took off to Poland for hollidays for 3 weeks,so it has to wait until he's back..is that an option maybe?
I won't be around here too for a week,cause I'm heading off for Wacken tomorrow night..so you can all lay back and relax without me..

About that Terrorizer thing,those 2 copy's might as well got lost along the way overthere,did you think of that option?

 

[unhinged]

haha sorry to put you on the spot
its really a general reqest for any of the non english reviews
anything that isn't a shitty online translation is a help, so thanks

oh and those 2 copies were sent separately
so both being lost is unlikely, doesn't really matter now

not so positive>>


http://www.tartareandesire.com/reviews/scald_vermiculatus.html


Scald - Vermiculatus
Code666, 2006

No doubt: we´re before an exotic band, to say the least. Scald doesn´t have anything to do with Northern mythology. In fact they hail from Northern Ireland. They´re not a celtic posse either. This release has been supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Needless to say this tawdry writer whose lines you´re reading right now didn´t know any band from there. They play... hummm, time for the dub. Progressive psychodelic instrumental doom metal? Something similar, if nothing else. Reviews are allegedly explanatory and I´ll try to do my best. Let´s go for something more about it, then. “Vermiculatus” is made off a single track lasting over 47 minutes. As you´ve noticed yet, there are no vocals here. The changes are continuous. The colour of the notes is manifold and kaleidoscopic. It sounds weird, and it really is. The process of listening and understanding of the whole album is certainly tough. Those of you prone to use the skip button will be disappointed if this is not for you. And let me imagine “Vermiculatus” is not an easy thing to taste. To be concise, I´ve got the impression this is an album that is constantly failing to take off. An unavoidable erratic feeling endowed with constant tempo changes and stops, it´s the responsible for that. Yes, it´s only one track in the album, and that´s both the hammer and the anvil the listener is placed between. Too movements, lack of thickness in the songmaking, sparse focus of the structures. Multitude of bits conform the track but the overall feeling is very loose and inconsistent.
Ok, we´re not reviewing a concept metal release like the superb Edge Of Sanity´s “Crimson” in terms of conventional melodic focus and patterns, I assume it. Anyway, ambient/avantgarde music has got its own mysteries and tricks, and these guys still haven´t acquired the powers to rule them. The sound is an amalgam of varied landscapes showing evocative doomster mellow sequences, ambient intros, heavy riffing, industrial blinks and other gloomy sounds more akin to traditional eerie soundtracks. The guitar chords, the most prominent instrument to remark, often exhibit a slight dissonance in the vein of some bleak chords à la Esoteric. The listener receives a constant, fast slideshow of sounds hard to digest due to the mentioned lack of focus. Original and different from other typical releases? Of course. Er... and what about the quality? “Vermiculatus” is made to be excessive, magnificent and maybe epic in a certain way, but in the end it stays just as a brave album able to be categorised as incidental doom music or progressive ambient metal. Good in execution and sound, weak in the songmaking and global arrangement, this is just for fans of the unknown and bizarre.

Fjordi

5.5/10

just noticed this guy gave fire in the head 1/10

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

What's fire in the head? I only know of a song with a title like that..

 

[unhinged]

its an Eibon release

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

Well I dunno,I love bands who play mainly Instrumental,but I listened to those two samples of F/I/T/H on Eibon and...it honestly makes me feel like i'm at the dentist..what a weird music I don't understand nothing of it..do you like this?

 

[unhinged]

yep,I love this type of thing.

..........

From AUDIO SAVANT

Vermiculatus is a single 47 minute track, and marks a slight departure for the three piece from Ireland. Unlike previous Scald material, Vermiculatus is a completely instrumental affair, which gives each of Scald’s member’s alot of room to stretch their arms and rest their ravaged voices. The first 25 minutes of the album are considered the performance half, with a multitude of riffs and ideas explored, but never repeated. The second half of the album is an ambient/noise reconstruction of the performance section,with rising percussion, fried electronics, piano and haunting drones. Unlike other single track albums released in recent years, Vermiculatus unfolds like a single song, and the transition from the performance section to the reconstruction is seamless.
Also included is a short animated clip called Vermiculatus b1, which features music “stripped and shredded from Vermiculatus b,” the reconstructed section of the song. This release comes packaged in a fold out digipack, with a slipcase for the CD. The package as a whole is stunning, and makes this a necessary buy, not just another album to be downloaded. Experimental metal album of the year, and for sure this will make my top five.

http://audiosavant.blogspot.com/

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

I found another one..


Label: Aural Music
Release: 12.06.2006
Von: BRT
Punkte: 9/10
Time: 47:28
Stil: PostGrindcore
URL: Scald

Verdammt ambitioniertes Werk das die Nordiren von SCALD da vorlegen. Auf gesamter CD befindet sich genau ein Track, dazu – um es zu verbildlichen – noch ein Film (der leider bei mir nicht lief). In den über 45 Minuten brennen SCALD ein instrumentales Feuerwerk zwischen Grindcore, Metal, Doom, Akustikpassagen und Progressiv-Rock ab, das so mancher Selbstmusizierender blass wird. Es wiederholt sich kein einziger Part, dementsprechend lässt der Wiedererkennungswert wohl etwas zu wünschen übrig, doch darum geht es hier ja auch gar nicht.
Vermiculatus sollte man deshalb wohl eher als Soundtrack verstehen. Es mag zwar musikalisch nicht an Heroen wie Neurosis oder Isis erinnern, die entstehende Atmosphäre jedoch geht sehr deutlich in diese Richtung. Dieses Gefühl wird noch verstärkt, wenn nach ca. 30 Minuten die Platte in ein einziges Ambient Soundscape übergeht, was den Soundtrack Charakter der Platte nur hervorhebt. Interessant dabei ist, dass der Faden der Platte beibehalten wird und einige Themen wieder aufgegriffen werden.
Ein spannendes und vielseitiges Album, das nicht nur der Hartwurst-Fraktion gefallen wird. 9 Punkte.

edit: damn I forget again the link: http://www.nocturnalhall.de/reviews/S/scald_vermiculatus.htm

 

[Angeleyes Part II]

And the English tranlation..

Label: Aural Music
Release: June 12 2006
By: BRT
Rating: 9/10
Time: 47:28
Style: PostGrindcore
URL: Scald

What SCALD unleashes upon mankind is a damn ambitious work! Hailing from Northern Ireland these gents deliver exactly one track and – to visualize – a movie (didn’t work for me). Running over 45 minutes SCALD burn down a firework of grindcore, metal, doom, acoustic passages and progressive rock, make other musicians looking pale. Not even one part gets repeated, what also means, the recognition value is low, but that’s not the point.
You better understand Vermiculatus as a soundtrack. It musically might not remind of heroes such as Neurosis or Isis, but the created atmosphere is definitely similar. This feeling gets boosted when this track turns into a pure ambient soundscape after around 30 minutes, accenting the soundtrack character. Interestingly there is a red thread kept thru the entire album, picking up the one or the other theme again.
A thrilling and versatile work, not only for die-hard fans. 9 points.

The link is the same ok?..

 

[Emi]

from the mighty "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" (printed - august 2006)

 

[unhinged]

got that in the post this morning
it's nice when someone puts some real effort into it instead of mixing up the words of the press release.

 

[Emi]

http://www.gothtronic.com/?page=23&reviews=2690

The promotional blurbs, that accompanies the promotional copy of a CD, rarely deliver what they promise. In the case of the Irish experimental grinders Scald the blurb promises the following: "the first section (...) is a complex composition of no repeated parts". So, I was expecting a piece of music completely void of repetition, but instead would consist solely of a progression of sounds like an immense expanding sound scape. Furthermore, since they are described "progressive post-grind", I was expecting to hear this daring composition combined with the traditional guitar and vocal sounds of grindcore. You can imagine that I was rather excited when I popped this disc in my CD-player.

Alas, alas. The lack of structure seems to mean that they avoid verse-chorus-verse structures like so many bands in, for instance, the post-rock genre. They also rely heavily on quiet-loud-quiet dynamics (again like many bands in the post-rock genre). However, the fact that Scald's loud parts are very metal (apparently they started out playing grindcore) gives Scald a quite unique sound: it more or less sounds like Meshuggah meets Mogwai meets Neurosis. While the album is not as daring as the promotional blurb promises, it is still pretty good and pretty different from most stuff I have ever heard. The second half of the first and only song on Vermiculatus is a reconstruction of the first part begins. While this is all done decently, it makes the record fizzle out and makes me drop my attention, which is a bit of a shame after an interesting first half of the song.

Band: Scald(int)Label: Code666Genre: crossover (industrial crossover / metal / punk / screamo) Type: cd Grade: 8.2Review by: Pure_holocaust

 

[circus_brimstone]

MetalReview.com by Matt Mooring
http://www.metalreview.com/ViewReview.aspx?ID=2877

Production: 5/6
Songwriting: 5/6
Musicianship: 4.5/6

There was a story on public radio not too long ago about an unfortunate pet python that, after polishing off his monthly rabbit, for some unknown reason, proceeded to consume the blanket that was in his aquarium. The whole queen size blanket, in one sitting (is there another way to eat a blanket?). They said it must have taken the dumb beast about six hours to polish off the bedding, which was later removed via surgery. That snake and his deed remind me of Scald’s Vermiculatus in a couple of ways—first, the band seems to be fixated on worms (often metaphorically) and their vermiculate movements, and more importantly, consuming Vermiculatus is a surprisingly substantial undertaking. This album is easy to enjoy from spin one, but actually absorbing it so that all the pieces fall into place and become familiar requires time and patience. In other words, the first bite comes easy—the rest, you have to work at.

I was first exposed to Northern Ireland's Scald through their debut album, a pitch black, acerbic mindfuck called Headworm. It too was a so-called challenging album, but cut from a different cloth. For Vermiculatus, the band dropped the vocals altogether and added a full time keyboardist, and has joined the likes of Edge of Sanity, Green Carnation, Sleep, Meshuggah, and Fantomas by crafting an album consisting of only a single track. Interestingly, during its forty-seven minute duration the song moves through several variations of its theme without relying on repeating passages. Think of it as the anti-Dopesmoker. This tactic gives the album an abstract and more loosely structured feel, but the material seldom seems to wander. Vermiculatus is made up of two halves. The first, described as progressive post-grind, uses both clean and heavy riffing patterns that utilize plenty of breathing room between bursts, creating a spacey atmosphere skillfully furthered by keyboard effect accompaniment. The band builds and maintains tension by providing a nice variety of tempo and texture, and comparisons to Voivod come to mind a few times during the first half of the album.

The second half of Vermiculatus consists of an ambient reconstruction and development of its first movement. Now, ambient can often be a take it or leave it kind of thing, but in this case, the material is both well executed and compliments well its heavier predecessor. Vermiculatus is surprisingly engrossing for an album of this type, and doesn’t ever feel like it runs out of steam, although admittedly, the first half is more compelling than the second. The album is solemn and foreboding, while also remaining thoughtful and artistic. Like Fantomas on Delirium Cordia, Scald also seems to be doing some instrumental abstract storytelling on this album, which appears to revolve around the life cycle and foreign parasites as a metaphor for mental disorder. The album’s theme is furthered on the brief Quicktime video titled “Vermiculatus B1”, a black and white computer animation piece that, unless it forces you into an epileptic fit, provides some cool and disturbing visuals that elaborate on the album’s theme. The video is the work of drummer Paul McCarroll, who’s also responsible for the outstanding artwork on the foldout packaging. Scald has succeeded in creating an album as intriguing and original as anything you’ll hear all year. It’s no wonder the band landed on Code666, a label that regularly offers up tantalizing specialties of the eclectic and bizarre.

 

[Christopher]

Wow, this record sounds great.

Where will Scald take their music after this? Sometimes bands come out with something experimental to extend themselves abstractly, then they return to the tried and true format. Hmm, then again, Scald always had their own thing going, so maybe things will remain quite interesting...

 

[unhinged]

Wow, this record sounds great.

Where will Scald take their music after this? Sometimes bands come out with something experimental to extend themselves abstractly, then they return to the tried and true format. Hmm, then again, Scald always had their own thing going, so maybe things will remain quite interesting...

punk as fuck actually....and soon
followed by experimental noise and doomprog

I could tell you what the next 6 releases would be

 

[Langoustator]

A pretty bad one (some metalheads definitely don't appreciate ambiant ):

From Chronicles Of Chaos:

_Vermiculatus_ is one of those albums that cause reviewers to make up long chains of adjectives to describe what it sounds like. In one word however, it sounds aimless to me. It may be adventurous and ambitious, but its instrumental and noise meanderings fail to capture my interest.The album consists of a single track, near fifty minutes in length, structurally divided in half. During the first half, Scald mix progressive, jazzy tendencies with some virtually uncategorizable metal elements. The music changes continuously throughout its duration, but always remains instrumental. The second half apparently reprises the same musical themes, but does so with ambient and noise elements. Finally, there is also a multimedia section, which includes a digital animated movie depicting a sequence of writhing wireframe bodies.
If the result of this attempt at an objective description of what I found on _Vermiculatus_ sparked your interest, then by all means give it a try; you may be able to find a purpose to it all, something to keep you interested. To me however, the first half alternates between some listenable experiments with dissonant riffs and a succession of bland segments that seem to come from nowhere and lead nowhere. The second half tends to fade into background noise far too quickly to make me consider any artistic merit it may have for what it tries to achieve. The animated film provides a few moments of passing curiosity, but little else. In other words, while there may be something relevant here for certain listeners, I am definitely not one of them.

3/10