Scorngrain
Utopia. Paranoia. Perversions!

March 2011
Released: 2010, Miasma Magazine
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

“Acid thrashing cyber metal madness?” I remember reviewing these Finnish weirdo metallers Scorngrain´s debut album CYBERWARMACHINE back in 2004 already, scoring it 3.5 out of 5. Someone got pretty excited about them, I see.



UTOPIA. PARANOIA. PERVERSIONS! is the band´s 3rd outing that was released only in Finland with Miasma Magazine´s issue 4/2010 – and never anywhere else in a physical CD format (it was also released in a digital format on October 11th 2010 by Osasto A-Records). Cheap but an excellent marketing system for the magazine, the label and the band, I suppose?



Nevertheless, without having even a chance to hear Scorngrain´s 2nd album, titled 0,05% that came out on Dynamic Arts Records in 2006, compared to the musical outcome of their debut, I cannot (fortunately) find much difference between their debut and latest records, even if 6 long years have passed by between these two aforementioned releases in question.



Scorngrain is still musically a quite bizarre and strange but exciting and mind-stimulating mixture of thrash metal, black metal (mainly vocally though), industrial and programmed sample sounds – managing to make the band sound kinda disturbed and sick altogether. It´s bands like the Norwegian The Kovenant and Ram-Zet - mixed with small doses of other Norwegian symphonic black metal heroes Limbonic Art, Swedish ´pop metal´ act Pain and Finnish extreme avant-garde metallers Chaosweaver, that all pop up in my mind as names here and there occasionally whenever spinning the band´s 3rd studio album with careful and concentrated listens. Add also a healthy dose of thrash riffs into this very same thick soup, and your menu is ready to be served.



All in all however, this stuff is thoroughly well thought out and executed, containing several ideas that many other metal musicians obviously wouldn't even dare to touch with a long stick. After all it´s a pretty unique musical concept that Scorngrain have adopted for themselves anyway – and there´s always a slight chance that something bigger may grow out of this in the long run. Perhaps it´s not their time yet to get this stuff out for the masses, even if they would so rightfully deserve to get more recognition than they have gained thus far.



In the meantime while waiting for the grandeur of their massive world conquering, by all means kill your little curiosity about this act by checking out UTOPIA. PARANOIA. PERVERSIONS!. If it does not kill you, then it manages to leave a few long lasting scars on you at least.