Scordatura – Audio Glasgow: Live Review

By Gareth Allen on 6th October 2021 • ( Leave a comment )

It’s an evening of full-on death metal, as Glasgow’s very own Scordatura, makes a welcome return to a packed Audio Glasgow. The band is celebrating the twelve-month anniversary of the release of their excellent third album Mass Failure.

Audio Glasgow has been opening up live music again, for Glasgow’s metal community, and it provided the perfect setting for Scordatura’s live return. It is the most awesome of sights, to see the return of pit madness and crowd surfing, as Scordatura deliver a sledgehammer of a set.

Vocalist Daryl Boyce raises his hands into the air, as the band explodes into their first number, Collapse Of Humanity, from the Mass Failure album. The crushing stop/start guitar-led intro builds the tension and then hits the release button, with the blast beats thundering into the mix. Drummer Tam Moran adds some stunning cymbal accents, providing a striking musical contrast to the intensity of the blast beats. The ferocity of the playing is akin to being knocked over by an immense wall of sound.

With Servants Of Entrapment, a circle pit soon envelops half of the venue. The band’s precision ensemble playing is breathtaking, as Daryl’s death growls alternate with slam type squeals. Soon the crowd surfers are flying off the stage, as the mayhem shifts up a gear.

The Flesh That Hates, another standout track from Mass Failure, has a fast paced groove metal feel, with some impossibly heavy riffing from Owen McKendrick, that has resonances of the great Tony Iommi. Daryl’s piercing vocal is a like fourth instrument, working in complete synchronicity with Owen’s guitar.

Mass Failure, the album title track, played live, perfectly illustrates the band’s ability to shift gear with split-second timing, with its dance style breakdown sections. Key to this is Derek Wright’s dynamic bass playing, and his solo runs that sometimes jump out mid-song, during the set.

Daryl introduces Self-Created Abyss, from the album of the same name, by thanking a massively enthusiastic Glasgow audience for turning out. The song is an absolute set highlight, with the band seeming to throw everything they have at it. The performance is epic, with exceptionally complex polyrhythms crashing into hammering riffing. Then out of nowhere the song turns on its head, with Owen playing some really atmospheric, almost ambient guitar figures. Just superb.

The set completes with, of course, the amazing Disease Of Mind, again from the Mass Failure album. Daryl exhorts the audience to “pick up the pace, with no slacking”, as this is another ‘fast one’. The thrash metal-like charge of this song is irresistible, and interestingly Daryl’s vocal has a Corey Taylor-like quality, as he urges the audience on. The breakdown section is fabulously heavy, sounding impressively like something off Black Sabbath’s classic Sabotage album.

To tumultuous applause, the band is persuaded to play an unplanned encore, to a chant of “One more song!” This reviewer has seen Scordatura on a couple of occasions, including an incendiary performance at Bloodstock. This performance is evidence, if evidence was needed, that the band has continued to develop, and is now quite simply, a top-level death metal band, with an awesome technical delivery, and unique rapport with their audience. Don’t miss them live if you get the opportunity, and check out the Mass Failure album, it’s a death metal classic.