What you’re about to hear is 20 years in the making. Finnish death metal outfit Scum originally recorded Garden of Shadows in 1996 with the intention of releasing it through Black Mark Production (Home to Bathory, and the same label that released the first two Scum records). While that never panned out, the band has decided to release the album now, two decades after the fact.
“I Am Messiah” is the opener to Garden of Shadows, a slow burner reminiscent of the death-doom the band released on their first record, Mother Nature. Haunting melodies and distant vocals round out the sense of isolation on the song, which feels like an intact timepiece.
The band chose to represent the feeling of “I Am Messiah” with a photograph of a frozen winter landscape.
“This picture symbolizes the song, it shows the agony and angsty cold, we went for a very Paradise Lost/Tiamat-touch with the four seasons of nature-lyrics with an avant garde feeling,” vocalist P.T. Askola says.
Blood Music will fully unearth and release Garden of Shadows on December 2. Preorders are available here.
