Holy Scum – All We Have Is Never
Holy Scum – All We Have is Never
Rocket Recordings
Release Date: 06/06/2025
Review by Metalphysicist
8/10
I went nuts when I read in the press release that the compositional process of an album found inspiration in landscapes where the ground is sacred, according to secular traditions. That’s exactly what is going on “All We Have Is Never”, the new album from Holy Scum.
According to the press release, we learned that. Quote: ‘The Isle of Lewis is the largest of the Outer Hebrides archipelago, and a place where myth and folklore are abundant. The Callanish Stones, a cruciform circle reckoned by tradition to be the forms of petrified giants who refused to convert to Christianity, once prompted notable antiquarian Julian Cope to pronounce himself, “Lashed by wind and rain, but surrounded by vibe.”
Despite the fascinating mythological approach and the connection of Holy Scum members with Mother Earth, this seems very inspiring. But I guess that, if we take another look on the Sacred Stones from another point of view, from some digger, for instance, he’d be able to explore the monolith’s stones digging deep down the soil to look after the mineral reign below the dirt, and so the environment itself may also be read by actually what is going into the ground in a diverse approached – literally sunken in the earth.
And, if we keep digging the rocks all the way down, we may find the hole of Alice’s rabbit , and, then, the physicist would find the genesis of the Industrial Music genre, finally – coined in the 70s, by bands like Throbbing Gristles and Cabaret Voltaire, which carved the iron and sulphur to build sonorities from iron pipes and old and deformed old machines mixed with dissonant out-of-tun bows from some musical instrument.
When we hear “All We Have Is Never”, taking a look after Holy Scum organic perspective, we find out that the band flirts with sonorities taken from Ministry earthquake powerhouse Industrial Metal conception, specifically the songs from “The Land of Rape and Honey” (1988), on such songs on ‘All Is Never’ as ‘Just Tell Me How it End’. Suddenly my ears captured noises from the underground that reminded me of the post-punk 80’s era! It seemed to me that Killing Joke is the band which influenced Holy Smoke the most; if you listen to the self-titled album (2003) as well as the records from Killing Jokes’ early catalogue, such as ‘Eights’, one of the band’s greater successes, taken from the album “Night Time” (1985), you are going to find out that ‘Eighties’ wasn’t only ripped off by Nirvana (listen to the riff line on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and tell me if you don’tagree with me) which had already mined the soil for its chemical element known as heavy metals. At the Middle Ages of alternative Rock.
So did Holy Scum on “All Is Never”. Just listen to the song ‘Requiem’ that seemed to me that it was where the vocal lines were taken off; and Killing Joke’s drum lines, such as the loop in the tone tones on ‘The Death & Resurrection Show’ is also heard on Holy Smoke songs, ‘Waves of Laughter’ and particularly on ‘I Am the Land’.
That being said, I don’t mean that “All Is Never” is swallowed up by their Killing Joke and post-punks influences. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that Holy Scum did a great job of transmuting these songs into a beautiful piece of 2020s-noise compressed noise. The only ‘if’ is that they almost made it to the bottom of proto-Industrial musical elements, even though I think that they tried to, in terms of the album’s production and mixing. But that is ok, and I respect a lot what I heard on “All is Never” and I am pretty sure that Holy Scum is gonna be ready soon to dive to the very depths of the underground world – both on geology and the Myths that they worship.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Waves of Laughter
02. These Hills
03. Thieves
04. Trying in Hell
05. Liar
06. I Am the Land
07. Witches
08. Just Tell Me How It Ends
09. Faces
10. Like December
LINKS:
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