SCUMRISE!: Super Hits EP
Finland has a rather vibrant underground, but most of what we’ve heard here is of the hardcore variety, for some reason. Yes, believe it or not, Finnish hardcore is a “a thing,” as it were. Why do we question your belief? Because who associates Finland with anything but trolls and poorly-written troll metal, right? Well, now you know, and if you’re curious, here’s a comp with a rather hefty list of bands to check out to further your knowledge of Finnish hardcore. There are quite a few interesting acts in the genre from out of there, so stop the hate, start to believe. Now that we’ve gotten past the whole Ripley’s segment of this review, let’s move on to SCUMRISE!. Like many a modern band, they seek to annoy us with CAPS and punctuation that confuses the spell checker, and we’re not entirely sure we’ve even written it properly. Awesome. Just as confusing is this release, because it’s a lot harder to categorize than most of the stuff we receive in spite of its rather simple presentation. These Finnish guys command more genres than we’d care to mix together, to save ourselves, yet again, from sounding like some sort of God creating genres out of the void. Suffice to say, the Finnish hardcore background we opened this with is just a piece of what you’ll find in the Super Hits EP.
Luckily for the superficial of us, the cover pretty much sets the stage. SCUMRISE! (sp?) play a beat-in-the-face type of hardcore/punk, complete with blurry left-hand-drawn imagery. So, expect there to be a face beaten in, against a brick wall, and then toss some graffiti over that. Surprising thing here is you get a lot of what you’d expect and then they take it further. Is it on CD or vinyl? Pffffff, no. More like cassette, duh. Does the digital version sound better than the sweet tape hiss on which it has been recorded? Yes, but who in the Hell listens to digital when they have a retro Magnavox? This guy. At any rate, that’s just to save us lugging the thing around, since it’s right on Bandcamp (see below). So the image is right there, as are the lyrics. Drinking beer and lamenting one’s age while worshipping the Devil summarizes all of it rather succinctly. But that’s where the expectations end, because SCUMRISE! (seriously sp?) have just the right amount of mixture to surprise, or rather SURPRISE!
Super Hits combines punk and hardcore with some hard rock and metal elements cleanly, and that’s the surprise. Lyrics are delivered in a variety of styles from rally cries to black metal combo attacks, and the extra sweet juiciness on top of that slab of meat is that the music is delivered in the same way. Thus, where you hear punk, you get punk, where you hear hardcore, you get hardcore, where you here black metal, you get some of that (it’s brief, but present). You might be wondering why that’s a surprise, but it truly is for the reason that there’s a whole lot of genre bending going on anymore, but rarely do you see a band bend without snapping. SCUMRISE! have done a fine job here of mixing lo-fi aesthetique with refined simplicity and easily combine styles to create a sound that’s at once unique at the same time it is accessible on several levels. There’s really nothing to cause one’s mind to explode in newness here, but it’s done well, and it’s done right for a change. Interestingly, it also has this flow where it starts on the softer end and by the middle starts to get harder. Hmm, yes, perhaps that innuendo was intended…
Written by Stanley Stepanic
SCUMRISE!: Super Hits EP
Self-Released
4 / 5
