WITHERING SCORN Feat. Former MEGADETH, FATES WARNING Members: Second Album Is 'Completely Done'

WITHERING SCORN, the new band featuring former MEGADETH drummer Shawn Drover and his brother, and fellow ex-MEGADETH member, Glen Drover, along with former FATES WARNING bassist Joe DiBiase and German singer Henning Basse, who has previously played with FIREWIND, METALIUM and MAYAN, has completed work on its second album, "Sanctum Of The Depraved". The effort will be the follow-up to WITHERING SCORN's debut, "Prophets Of Demise", which came out in July 2023 via Frontiers Music Srl.

On Friday (December 19),Shawn shared a video update on his social media in which he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): " Hey, everybody. Happy holidays. Shawn Drover here from WITHERING SCORN. I haven't posted anything in a while, although there has been some cool stuff going on.

"What we did was we had the record pretty much done, and there was one song that Glen wasn't vibing on in particular," he explained. "Joe and myself as well liked the song — not quite as much as the others. It was a little more commercial sounding or whatever, although it's a complete metal track anyway. But Glen had this instrumental tune he was working on, and so we omitted the more commercial song and had to record and finish writing and record this instrumental track that he had. And I'm glad we did that, because it turns out to be a really cool track. It's something different for the record, and I'm really glad that we did that in hindsight now. But that pretty much cost us four or five weeks of time."

Shawn continued: "So anyway, the record is completely done. And also we had to change, with the liner notes of the artwork and all that stuff, the songtitle had to be changed and all this stuff, which took a little bit time. But the good news is Max Norman mastered the entire record. It sounds fantastic. We have all the artwork, everything ready to go. And after the holidays, beginning of the year, we're gonna send it off, which takes about, I believe, 10 weeks or so. So realistically, we're probably looking at somewhere mid to end March that we'll get the physical vinyl, colored vinyl and CD in our hands. And, of course, I'll keep you updated on that."

Drover added: "But that's where we're at. 'Sanctum Of The Depraved' is a hundred percent completely done. And if you like the first record, you're definitely gonna dig this one too. We're really proud of it. And it's taken some time, but the world's not gonna blow up if you don't get the WITHERING SCORN record in the next two weeks. We wanted it to be right, and I'm glad Glen made that judgment call to put the instrumental track on there. 'Cause now the record's even better."

"Sanctum Of The Depraved" will be released independently on vinyl, CD, and digital. To make this happen, WITHERING SCORN has launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover the costs of manufacturing, artwork and promotion.

WITHERING SCORN was formed in 2020 by Glen and Shawn, who previously played together in MEGADETH, as well as in EIDOLON. The pair teamed up once again for their latest musical offering and are joined by DiBiase, who played with FATES WARNING for 14 years on multiple records and world tours, and Basse.

In a July 2023 interview with Sleaze Roxx, Shawn stated about how WITHERING SCORN came together: "It really started with the pandemic. Since the music industry was basically shut down in terms of touring, Glen and I started to write some new songs and possibly put a new record together, so we asked our friend Joe DiBiase if he was interested, to which he was and we did the same with our singer Henning Basse. So the four of us, over the course of the next three years on and off, put ['Prophets Of Demise'] together which was released worldwide via Frontiers Records. We are really proud of the work we put into this record."

In a separate interview with Antichrist Magazine, Glen described "Prophets Of Demise" as "an old-school heavy metal album with lots of dynamics." He added: "Musically, we have never really strayed away from writing heavy metal music, so this wasn’t anything difficult to do, really."

Regarding the lineup for WITHERING SCORN, Glen said: "Well, in this situation, it worked out very well. Sometimes the chemistry is off when you put a certain lineup together, whereas in this situation, we all get along and work very well together. [I] could not be happier."

Asked how the new band is different and similar to his previous collaborations with Glen, Shawn told the "Nothing Shocking" podcast: "It's been really similar to the first band that Glen and I did years ago, which was a band called EIDOLON. We released, actually, five records on Metal Blade in the early 2000s, right before we both got into MEGADETH. And the dynamic of that was that I write most of the material. Although Glen does contribute to some of it, I usually have the main germ of ideas, and, of course, he records all that stuff. So he's kind of a studio guy. He's the guitar player, but he handles all of the studio recording affairs, and I just kind of take on the job of creating most of the music. And we finetune it — he tweaks it and kind of makes it his own in a way. But that's kind of the working relationship we have with that. Because if Glen wrote all the music, I'd basically be doing nothing, and he would have to tackle all the work on his own. So we made a decision years ago — that was back in the mid-'90s, actually, when we put out our first bit of music, before we got signed to Metal Blade — that's always been the working dynamic, is I create most of the material, and he handles all the recording affairs with that. And it's worked out quite well. So that's what we're doing this time as well."

Shawn joined MEGADETH in 2004 as the replacement for Nick Menza, who had only just rejoined the group. Drover performed on four MEGADETH studio records: 2007's "United Abominations", 2009's "Endgame", 2011's "TH1RT3EN" and 2013's "Super Collider".

Glen Drover left MEGADETH at the end of 2007 and was replaced by Chris Broderick, who previously played with NEVERMORE and JAG PANZER.