Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, black, doom, sludge, grind, thrash, heavy, speed, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen, we fall through a dripping vortex to rise upon the very nadir where dwells Finland’s Scourge Lair.
How has no one else yet covered this first and terribly unnerving utterance from Scourge Lair? Where’s everyone been on this hideous demonstration? Who knows but these Finns’ initial five offerings envelop and constrict like getting draped in hallucinogenic cerecloth. I see vast plague-ridden wastescapes where leprous anthroparians knuckle forth gangly-limbed and as enshadowed as anything can be in a lightless biome and yet palpably enshadowed; sinister and rapidly advancing. And that’s only the first track!
Says D.O.T.B.P., one of Scourge Lair’s guitarists, and Demo:listen’s contact: “Originally we called ourselves Lair as we thought that fit the atmosphere we were trying to convey with our music. As we later found out another group by the same name existed . . . After months of throwing ideas around we settled with SCOURGE LAIR . . . [O]ne can picture it like this: Scourging, tearing of flesh, eradication of physical and mental barriers, reaching beyond.” Considering how well D.O.T.B.P. gets that latter point across with his guitarwork, should we really be surprised he’s so adept at communicating in the English language as well? Still, kudos for both.
Abominable Entities calls many styles and varying tempos into its dark assembly. But as far out as Scourge Lair get—and they get far out! How about the ending of “Inner Spheres?!” But no matter how far out Scourge Lair go everything they do sounds corrupted by the same vile spleen. And their demo reeks with the energy of four Finnish friends hanging out and jamming—except smileless and completely unhinged.
D.O.T.B.P. explains: “Besides myself there’s Hellmouth (bass), The Third Deceiver (drums) and J. Abhorer (guitar). Me and HM have been friends for well over ten years and always shared interests as far as metal goes and had even talked about starting a band together when we were much younger. At around 2013 the early concepts that would later become Scourge Lair started to form in my mind so me, HM and a drummer friend of ours got together and started rehearsing ideas that we had. After a few rehearsals the drummer dropped off due to not having time to commit. Luckily TTD – also a long friend and connoisseur of horrible Death like us – expressed interest in trying drums out. Despite his inexperience in drumming his vision and ideas proved to be invaluable. JA joined some time in 2014. He was asked to take part in our rehearsals by HM and TTD, and he immediately seemed like a good fit and someone who would contribute in pushing our unrefined output further.”
Boasting a production more suffocating than a sandworm’s throat, once you’ve hit play on Abominable Entities you’ll be spending the next thirty minutes entrenched and weltering in pestilential curses. According to D.O.T.B.P. Abominable Entities was recorded in Scourge Lair’s rehearsal place. He says: “HM had dabbled in the area of sound engineering quite a bit in the past and we had [a] pretty good mixer and mics (HM also mixed and mastered the demo). We spent a weekend in February ‘16 to record guitars, bass and drums. Later on in March we spent another weekend to record vocals and additional instrumentations.”
Head over to Scourge Lair’s Bandcamp and show your support. Somehow they’ve still got copies of their tapes left.
You heard it here first on Demo:listen. Check this space next and every Friday for promising new metal.
