All We Have Is Never

HOLY SCUM

ALL WE HAVE IS NEVER

The Isle Of Lewis is the largest such 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 would not convert to Christianity - and by more recent observers as a prehistoric lunar observatory - once prompted notable chronicler of the ancient Julian Cope to pronounce himself “Lashed by wind and rain but surrounded by vibe.”

This was where Holy Scum decided to take a pilgrimage for the recording of their second album proper for Rocket Recordings, All We Have Is Never. Frustrated by the physical and logistical challenges keeping the band members from collaborating, they decided the best way forward was at the residential Black Bay Studios on Great Bernera, a two hour plus ferry ride from anywhere.

“The isolation of Black Bay was our salvation, a much-needed cleanse after a year of relentless misfortune” reckons the band’s Peter Taylor. “This new record evolved from years of jams, developed collaboratively with (vocalist) Mike (Mare) in the studio, but the period preceding this album was a true nightmare. We endured an 11-month limbo. We were paralysed, unable to release music, replenish sold-out merchandise, or perform live.”

“Musically, we remained dedicated, rehearsing in the desolate, echoing spaces of Manchester's abandoned factories, consistently evolving our sound” he adds “We entered the studio with a wealth of ideas, and emerged with even more, together.”

The modus operandi of Strange Desires, the band’s Rocket debut, had been largely centred around years of improvised sessions being sent to American-based vocalist and producer Mare (also of Dâlek) to do with as he wished, resulting in a confrontational and dubbed-out onslaught. However, the pathway to this new record involved a more organic approach.

Jamming, writing and recording together as a five-piece band for the first time, Holy Scum began to operate as a hive-mind that would produce their most focused work yet amidst the tranquil surroundings. “There is this big window in the live room and as we would be playing you would just see the bay and a parade of sheep walking by all day long” notes Mike. “Surrounded by each other with no distractions, our only real option was to create or go for a fucking frigid swim.”

Here, tighter punchier songs were made manifest which hone down the band’s fearsome invective into lean,vicious blasts of sound and fury. With the vice-like rhythm section of John Perry and Chris Haslam (both also of Gnod) focusing the assault, and recently recruited second guitarist Al Wilson (Ghold/Shuck) providing crucial ballast - leaving Taylor free to ‘go off Pete-st’ as Haslam puts it - the result is a record that’s both the band’s catchiest work and their most unforgiving.

Taylor describes the Holy Scum approach jokingly as ‘No riffs’ yet this belies an ability to carve abstraction and minimalism into monolithic and ominous shapes. Whilst the band are as handy as ever with excoriating and ear-splitting experimentation - as on the feverish guitar scree that underpins the taut 'Thieves' and the disorienting Glenn Branca-esque ‘Liar - they also excel in a grittily vital charge as analogous to the ballsy kinetics of Fugazi and The Ex (the primal 'I Am The Land') as the overcast catharsis of Killing Joke and Voivod (the infectious ‘Witches’).

The making of ‘All We Have Is Never’. beginning with a seventeen- hour journey for Mike across land, sea and air, arose out of his own period of personal tumult; “Lyrical inspirations for this one were really a reflection of my personal life and processing years of buried shit that was bubbling up. And of course being on this Island. You could feel the energy of the land, you could feel its past. This is about moving forward, letting go, being grounded in yourself and with the earth.”

“The title is a nod to the fact that everything ends - good, bad, ugly, beautiful. That is not a bad thing - it is a rebirth every time. We can spend a lifetime 24/7 together having shared experiences but living separate realities.”

“I don’t think it is nihilistic,” he adds. “The despair turns into hope for sure.”