Review Summary: Raw aggression that avoids gimmicks, showboating, or trend-chasing.
There’s nothing pretty about this album, and that’s exactly why it works.
Not Worthy of Human Compassion is 18 minutes of grindcore, death metal, and hardcore smashed together into something that feels genuinely pissed off, but never messy just for the sake of it.
Scalp’s sound is raw and filthy. Guitars are drenched in distortion, and the vocals are spat out with throat-ripping intensity, mostly mid-range shouts similar to Nails, mixed with growls reminiscent of Cannibal Corpse. It’s not theatrical, not polished, just hostile and real. The record also makes use of samples here and there, adding a bit of breathing space or tension between all the violence, but never slowing things down too much or feeling forced.
What makes this album stand out is how tightly it holds its shape. Scalp avoids the clichés that often drag bands like this down. There’s no ADHD riff-collage territory like you’d find with bands such as Cephalic Carnage, and no absurd, dragged-out breakdowns just to bait hardcore dancers or try to go viral on TikTok, a la Lorna Shore. The breakdowns that are here actually hit because they’re earned. The chaos never feels performative; it feels personal.
You can hear the influence of Nails in how violent and compact everything sounds, but Scalp pushes things even deeper into the muck. The production is grimy, suffocating, and heavy as hell. Beneath all the noise, there’s a strange emotional undercurrent: frustration, exhaustion, and disgust. It feels like the band is trying to exorcise something they can’t fully articulate.
The only weak spot is the opening track. I’ve never been a fan of slow, ambient intros where nothing really happens, and here it lasts about 1 minute and 30 seconds, eating into the album's already brief 18-minute runtime. I get the idea of setting a mood and building tension, but personally, I’d rather the album just kicked the door in from the start. Once it does, though, there’s not a single wasted second.
Not Worthy of Human Compassion isn’t trying to reinvent anything. It’s not clever. It’s not clean. It’s just pure, violent, cathartic noise. If that’s what you’re after, Scalp delivers in full.
