On Valentines Day, 1945, agricultural worker Charles Walton was found brutally murdered in Warwickshire in what appeared to be a ritualistic killing. Rupert Russell’s new film, The Last Sacrifice explores the psychic and cultural impact of this case, suggesting that the still unsolved crime planted the seeds of the notion of a ‘hidden Britain’: an occluded darkness lying beneath our fertile soil. It was this feeling, Russell argues, that birthed the classic era of folk horror cinema, reckoning as it did with the ominous ‘otherside’ of this green and pleasant land.
When noise-rock supergroup Holy Scum decamped to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides to record their new album All We Have is Never they were no doubt aware of the area’s unique pre-Christian identity. Home to the neolithic Callanish Stones and the mythic Seonaidh (an ale-guzzling Celtic sea god), the island is rich with strange history. In 1882 a German ship reported the sighting of a forty-metre sea monster in the waters off Lewis’ rugged coastline, cementing the island’s fortean reputation.
Recorded at the aptly named Black Bay Studio, All We Have is Never is a menacing affair. A leaner, more focused effort than their chaotic debut LP, Strange Desires, All We Have is Never represents both the refinement of a winning formula and the continuation of a descent into Holy Scum’s sonic netherworld.
Opener ‘Waves of Laughter’ sets a delightfully evil tone. Noisy drones and chiming synths build, giving way to a booming, elastic bassline and hollered vocals. As with previous releases, the band rely heavily on richly-detailed production but here the rhythmic elements are foregrounded, lending the record a more traditional noise-rock feel.
Discernable guitar parts shine through on tracks like ‘Thieves’, its distorted harmonics scratching a particular post-hardcore itch. However, the revised Holy Scum sound revolves predominantly around neanderthal basslines that suggest contempt for all riffs in excess of three notes.
It’s on closer ‘Like December’ that the sinister potential of this formula is fully realised. Like the summoning of ancient gods from a sacrificial altar, the track is dense with brooding atmosphere and cosmically-charged noise. With echoes of Gnod and even Shit and Shine’s doomier moments, All We Have is Never places Holy Scum in the continuum of genre-defying conjurers using noise and repetition as powerful weapons in the war against ‘fancy music’.
With a stellar roster of psyched-out luminaries including breakthrough superstars Goat, droning folk-doom masters Smote and exciting new prospects Rún, Rocket Recordings are clearly reaching an imperial apex. With their irresistible fusion of old ways-revivalism and sharp, modernist production, Holy Scum sit deservedly amongst this milieu. Whilst much contemporary media referencing Albion’s dark underbelly simply looks backwards, aping the aesthetics and atmosphere of the 60s and 70s; in the case of Holy Scum, awakening the Old Ones never sounded so fresh.
