Review: Scarcity – The Promise of Rain

Style: avant-garde black metal, totalism, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Glenn Branca, Imperial Triumphant, The Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 12 July 2024

Earlier this month, I made the trek out to Death Valley: it was 130° (54° for Celsius users). Standing in the middle of a massive desert bowl surrounded on all sides by craggy peaks and the air itself practically on fire was an awesome display of powers outside of human control—the dearth of water, glut of sunlight, paucity of humanity. Yet unlike my previous pilgrimage to Death Valley, I did not go to face the wrath of the Earth but to look heavenward. Designated one of seven gold-tier Dark Sky Parks in the United States by the International Dark-Sky Association, Death Valley offers a view of the galaxy I’d never seen as a city kid, and this month I saw the Milky Way for the first time, more stars than I’d seen in my life combined unfurled as a glowing band of light illuminating the moonless sky. 

Forceful vocalist and lyricist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon) was similarly inspired by a trip to the deserts of southern Utah in the poetics underpinning The Promise of Rain. Survival requires adaptation and transformation; the desert demands abnegation. Through catarrhic wails, monstrous growls, and emotional barks, Moore spits his arid poetry with sincerity. Among the harrowing lines throughout, opener “In the Basin of Alkaline Grief” concludes with two short stanzas: “Here, in the basin of alkaline grief / Loom the wounds in your soul, arrayed / Beneath the heavens’ desiccant gaze / I will make this waste our home / Beloved, you will never be alone.” Scarcity and Moore find grace in the desert and its searing power through the grief and fear of loss and abstinence. It’s a stunning progression from Moore’s grappling with death during covid on Aveilut, a focus on what comes after.

As a band, Scarcity have continued to evolve, transitioning from the work of mastermind and composer Brendon Randall-Myers and Moore to a full five-piece band. With Tristan Kasten-Krause (Sigur Ros, Steve Reich) on bass, Dylan Dilella (Pyrrhon) on guitar and Lev Weinstein (Krallice) behind the kit, the band have experienced an ignigenic rebirth through desert and through a new togetherness. While I miss the orchestral buildups of seemingly hundreds of microtonal guitars in a single cohesive piece from Aveilut, the new band opt to capture the energy of a live performance, to wield the power of five people in a room, and their force is virulent and unquestionable like Imperial Triumphant’s Live at the Slipper Room or John Coltrane’s Ascension. Reportedly captured in one or two takes, the fraught energy of The Promise of Rain is horrifying and raw, a dizzying heatstroke like on Kostnatěni’s Úpal. Scarcity create noise that breathes on its own with screaming microtonal guitars, absolutely pummeling bass, and drums which presage an imminent flash flood with their meteoric intensity. 

Still endowed with sweeping range, the compositions on The Promise of Rain lack some of the ingenious climaxes of Aveilut due to their shorter nature, yet Scarcity still play with the same overwhelming precision and flow in the tighter forms. A Totalist ensemble to their core—Randall Myers’ Glenn Branca influence shines brightly—the group fight their way through offbeat, microtonal songwriting, only rarely veering into more recognizably “metal” riffs such as at 2:45 in “Scorched Vision” or the thumping, heart-stopping power of the drums and bass at 4:00 into “Venom & Cadmium” just before the album’s only traditional guitar solo. The Promise of Rain is deft but wears violence on their sleeve driving between The Dillinger Escape Plan’s chaos and a far more sinister black metal side. Only halted once in its entirety on “Subduction,” The Promise of Rain is relentless and stabs its hooks deep, a desert thistle’s barb. 

On The Promise of Rain, Randall-Myers and crew have successfully captured the energy of a live performance, an exhausting listen like a trip through the literal desert. Black metal is the perfect vessel for the intensity that Scarcity conceptually need, and they utilize the medium perfectly with their writhing tremeloes and acrid blast beats. The album is as sublime for me as it must have been cathartic to record, an apotheosis of expressiveness through art. Back to my own journey, and it was impossible to deny a presence, a togetherness, not just with my mom and the other people who gazed starward, but with the universe I’m in and the stereotypical realization there’s no way we—humanity—are alone. Contemplating a hundred billion stars in one of a trillion galaxies one quickly forgets it’s a hundred and ten degrees out at midnight. The Promise of Rain captures that: complicated truths of what it feels like to experience being human.

Recommended tracks: In the Basin of Alkaline Grief, Scorched Vision, Venom & Cadmium, The Promise of Rain
You may also like: Pyrrhon, Thantifaxath, Dodecahedron, Meth., Kostnatěni
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: The Flenser – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Scarcity is:
Brendon Randall-Myers: guitar, synths
Doug Moore: vocals
Tristan Kasten-Krause: bass
Dylan DiLella: guitar
Lev Weinstein: drums