In 2024, Scour elevated their intensity with the announcement of their first full-length album, Gold, which includes a guest solo by Gary Holt (Slayer, Exodus). Recording for Gold began in February 2023 at Nodferatu’s Lair - Philip Anselmo’s personal studio and rehearsal space - which saw the band highly engaged in a concentrated effort toward a truly diabolical composition; with Anselmo leading the charge at every turn. One would often find the entire band in the control room in ecstatic debate; meticulously mulling over every blast beat and divebomb. The album was intermittently refined, and lyrical concepts finalized, over the course of 2023 as touring schedules would allow. Anselmo began vocal recordings in the fall of 2023 at ‘The Lair.’ Back-up vocal recordings were then executed by the rest of the band in arena backstage rooms over the course of Pantera’s February 2024 tour, where the full band would also thoroughly review the instrumentation mixes. Once the tracks were finalized by Scour and mixing engineer Dennis Israel, they were then passed to Fascination Street Studio in Örebro, Sweden for mastering by Jens Bogren.
Deepening the experience set forth in Scour’s EP trilogy, Gold pulls the listener through a blistering vortex of speed, aggression, and, above all, absolute horror. Drawing from a deep framework of literary horror masterworks, Gold guides the listener beyond the realm of death and through the metaphysical anomalies of a disheveled and decaying mind. In-so-which the pall of a savage universe is lifted, an inconceivable puppetmaster revealed, the remaining self of the listener excruciatingly dissolved, and left asking ‘who is it that pulls the strings?”