Year: 2015/2025
Label: Long Live Evil

This year has been an active one for US horrorcore trio Alla Xul Elu. In total, members of AXE released three albums: the group proper’s Gods Of Evil Rise (review), Billy Obey’s Rhymebook Of The Recently Deceased (review) and Lee Carver released Meathead under the moniker Satanic Steakhouse. They also had an acrimonious break with their former label Majik Ninja Entertainment and its owners Twiztid. Perhaps unrelated to the last mentioned, the group performed as opener for Insane Clown Posse – something that due to juggalo scene politics would have been unimaginable just a year ago.

Add to all of that re-releases of their two first albums, Head Of Horns early in the year, and now Sci Co Volume One. Incidentally, both celebrate their 10th anniversary this year. Neither have previously been released as pro CD’s, only as CDr’s and tapes.

On Sci Co, AXE were still a duo. Lee Carver joined the Billy Obey and Joe(y) Black a bit later, with 2018’s The Almighty being his debut release with AXE. However, his joining the group didn’t really alter AXE’s quintessential character: already on Head Of Horns, the macabre and gruesomely humorous image and dark, at times even industrial tinged horrorcore sound emerged.

Sci Co represents, on occasion, a slight aberration from AXE’s traditional sound, if not their oeuvre otherwise. There are far more old school hip hop elements on here, with some very stripped down beats that take things back to basics. Take for example Move Back: a pronounced rhythm, a bassline, and scratching. Nothing else, in a very boom bap fashion. There’s something very old school about the catchy, simple chorus. The track is also notable for featuring Scrub King, nowadays known as S.O.N, one of the Long Live Evil affiliate artists.

Sci Co without a doubt contains AXE’s most conventionally hip hop tracks, which from time to time go into some very “un-horrorcore” sound. Drink, for example, is a slab of slick G funk. I’m Sick sounds like it could have been on an early Wu-Tang Clan album. Still, most of the time the album sounds like classic AXE, with eerie horror movie beats that land the music firmly into horrorcore territory. In contrast to the tracks mentioned above, The Suffering, featuring harsh screams by Zach Religious, has some very AXE sounding distorted synths in the beat.

But it’s these for the band unconventional excursions into a more conventional sound that define the album. To a surprising degree, considering they’re not in majority. But they’re so uncharacteristic it’s hard to not have them define the album. Especially as the album doesn’t really contain any killer tracks or lasting personal favourites.

On one hand, this makes Sci Co an interesting item in AXE’s discography, and their stylistically most adventurous album. On the other, to be frank, the reason why I like AXE so much is because they do their own thing so well. On this album, they do their own thing less. You see where I’m going with this. As fun as it is to hear AXE try their hand at a more typical hip hop sound, the end result is inferior to their own sound.

Sci Co is not the album to check out first by AXE. In fact, I’d say that especially now, when the band have several killer albums under their belt, this is the one to check out last. It’s not a bad album, but it is AXE’s least. Dare I say it… Sci Co is a bit mediocre.

Visit Alla Xul Elu on their official website, Facebook or Instagram