SCORN
1/ Spasm (Harris,Bullen) 2.47
2/ Suck and Eat You (Harris,Bullen) 3.43
3/ Hit (Harris,Bullen) 7.34
4/ Walls of My Heart (Harris,Bullen) 6.58
5/ Lick Forever Dog (Harris,Bullen) 6.26
6/ Thoughts of Escape (Harris,Bullen) 5.15
7/ Deep In - Eaten Over and Over (Harris,Bullen) 8.25
8/ On Ice (Harris,Bullen) 7.54
9/ Heavy Blood (Harris,Bullen) 5.38
10/ Scum After Death (Dub) (Harris,Bullen) 5.50
11/ Fleshpile (Harris,Bullen) 5.09
12/ Orgy of Holiness (Harris,Bullen) 4.43
13/ Still Life (Harris,Bullen) 4.11
Recorded and mixed at Rhythm Studios, Bidford/ Warwickshire, November 1991
Produced by M.J. Harris and N.J. Bullen
Engineered by Paul Johnson
Michael John Harris and Nicholas James Bullen: bass, drums, drum machine, samplers,
vocals; Justin Broadrick: guitar.
1992 - Earache Records (UK), MOSH 54 (2x12")
1992 - Earache Records (UK), MOSH 54 CD (CD)
1992 - Earache/Relativity (USA), 88561-1112-2 (CD)
1996 - Earache Records (USA), MOSH 54 (CD)
Note: Tracks 10-13 are only contained on the CD versions.
Fleshpile
Overall, I don't like Vae Solis too much. The first half of the CD has lots of heavy guitar on it, which I'm usually into (I like Pitch Shifter, Helmet, Quicksand, etc), but it seems to fall short. A song will start out with a really great riff, but then all at once some thin, wandering vocals will come in, the riff will turn into a single chord, and the beat will die. This is when the song starts falling apart. Anyway, with that said, the rest of the CD is not bad at all. Tracks 8 and 10 are definitely very good, but they don't have as much of the crappy guitar/vocal shortcomings in them. The CD gets less heavy towards the end and it sounds a lot better. Get this CD if you're a hardcore fan or if you're really interested, but there isn't so much there if you like Scorn for it's deep, ambient feel.
Matt Feusner
Mick Harris' first album with Nick Bullen as Scorn produced a debut that was perfectly appropriate for its label home on Earache. Perhaps an oversimplification, but Vae Solis is notable for partially being a last working out of Harris' death/thrash jones in a slightly more conventional sense — not entirely a throwback, but certainly one with its moments. Here, Bullen's roaring vocals have an obvious kinship with Justin Broadrick's snarls from Godflesh (all the more fitting since Broadrick contributes guitars to the album); the sense of ambient space that would grow stronger and stronger here turns up mostly as occasional dropouts in the mix or slabs of echo and reverb slathered over the words. One notable exception is "Deep In — Eaten Over and Over," with a truly funereal pace and a suffused sense of dread and murk. Comparisons at the time to the early groan and doom efforts of Swans, for instance, were well considered. Scorn's obsessive focus on structure and pounding drumbeats also suggests another close parallel — Robert Hampson, similarly shifting gears in the early '90s from Loop's rampages to Main's rhythm-is-rhythm portraits. Clattering extra percussion samples herald "Walls of My Heart" and crop up in "On Ice"; at the same time, there are quicker thrash moments like the start of "Hit," which — while hardly Napalm Death hyperspeed — still show a lingering connection to older approaches. Song titles convey the basic thematic obsessions — again, not all that far removed from Godflesh: "Suck and Eat You," "Thoughts of Escape," "Scum After Death." Then there's what was a single from the album, though "Lick Forever Dog" probably wasn't going to trip off the tongues of many DJs. Still, it's one of the better songs, Bullen's vocals more direct and less treated over a pretty good death-march herky-jerky arrangement.
Ned Raggett (courtesy of the All Music Guide website)