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If you were alive between 2003 and 2016, I’m pretty willing to bet you remember the car brand Scion. Scion was an offshoot of Toyota based in North America that produced eight models of cars throughout their lifespan as a brand before being absorbed into Toyota in August 2016.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Scion’s record label, Scion Audio Visual or Scion A/V. Or more specifically, the fact that a car brand put out incredible rock and metal releases from bands like Wormrot, and Enslaved, and Revocation, and Immolation, and Meshuggah and more.

I couldn’t find a concrete number on how many releases Scion A/V did across all the genres that they covered, but one figure says they had 143 records and EPs to their name as of February 6, 2013.

Scion A/V also had an annual heavy metal music festival called Scion Rock Fest that was held between 2009 and 2014. The festivals had some really, truly insane lineups, including everyone from Mastodon, Neurosis, and High On Fire to Cannibal Corpse, Voivod, Morbid Angel, and Obituary, to Agalloch, Down, and Sleep… and the list goes on and on. You get the idea. Scion A/V really had its finger on the pulse of metal.

So now let’s get back to the releases that Scion A/V did. Scion A/V debuted their heavier leaning affairs in 2009 with the release of Boris‘s Scion A/V Remix Buzz-In EP. The EP features remixes of Boris‘s 2008 track “Buzz-In” done by Todd Edwards, Mixhell (which is the project headed up by former Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera), Optimo, and Nosaj Thing.

Scion A/V would continue releasing metal material right up until their demise in 2016, though the real meat of the metal releases from Scion A/V came between 2011 and 2014.

So now that we kind of just have a brief history down, I’m gonna walk you through some of the more interesting metal releases Scion A/V had, and show you that somehow a car brand had one of the most interesting metal labels in the 2010s. Hopefully, in this process, you get introduced to a handful of releases that maybe you never checked out or didn’t even know existed at all.

And it is also worth noting right up top that some of these releases are still available online. Some of them have been reissued, both digitally and physically, and some you are really gonna have to hunt down some physical copies, possibly at some pretty great expenses. So with that in mind, let’s get into it.

Crusher by Magrudergrind (2010)

Hailing from Washington, D.C., Magrudergrind remains a criminally underrated grindcore band that seems to have just kind of stopped. Magrudergrind formed in 2002 and, after a string of releases, dropped their 10” EP Crusher in 2010. The EP is six tracks long and 11 minutes total, and caps off about eight years of crushing constant material from Magrudergrind. Sadly, the band wouldn’t release any new music for another six years since Crusher, and then pretty much disappeared completely after their 2016 record II released on Relapse Records.

Crusher is still out there online, and you can grab a physical copy of it pretty cheap. It helps that it was originally issued by Scion A/V in 2010 and then reissued by Bones Brigade, Kaotoxin Records, and To Live A Lie a few times. So you know, it’s still available online, still available on streaming services, and enough labels reissued it that you’re not really gonna have a super hard time finding this one. Magrudergrind wasn’t exactly the most prolific band in terms of touring and playing shows, but they did play five of the six songs from Crusher live. The closer, “Cognition,” was the only one that never made it to the stage.

Noise by Wormrot (2011)

Scion A/V putting out a Wormrot EP in 2011 was an insane move. Wormrot had just put out their debut album Dirge four months prior on Earache Records. And it’s not like Wormrot was this huge name that would draw a ton of attention to Scion A/V. They were just a really great up-and-coming band at the time.

As for Noise, I mean, it’s early Wormrot. Of course it’s a ripper. It’s five minutes and five tracks of devastating, hard-hitting grindcore. Finding a physical copy of Noise is a little difficult and expensive these days, but Noise is still available online as a standalone release. So listening to this one, at least online, isn’t too hard.

Interestingly, Noise seems to be making a comeback when it comes to live Wormrot shows. The band has included “Outbursts of Annoyance,” “Breed to Breed,” and “Loathsome Delusions” back into their setlist for the first time in a little while for both their 2024 and 2025 shows.

The Sleeping Gods by Enslaved (2011)

Enslaved was on a rampage at this point in their career. The band just put out Axioma Ethica Odini in 2010 and would go on to put out another great record called Riitiir in 2012. But between those two releases were two smaller ones in 2011: The Sleeping Gods released on Scion A/V, and then a shorter 7” called Thorn on Soulseller Records.

If you’ve never heard The Sleeping Gods before, definitely go listen to it. It’s the perfect bridge between the two records that we just talked about, and it’s 28 minutes long, so you’re getting a pretty full Enslaved experience from it. But The Sleeping Gods is also fairly experimental despite its brevity. In a 2017 interview with Decibel, Enslaved‘s Ivar Bjørnson said the EP was a “fusion of the outliers from the main road they had been taking on the full-lengths — more rock-ish expressions, electronica, folk, and so on.”

The Sleeping Gods can be found online. It’s packaged as a compilation with Enslaved‘s 2011 7” Thorn, which, again, was released on Soulseller Records. The Sleeping Gods got a few pressings in 2011 and 2012 via Scion A/V, and then The Sleeping Gods/Thorn compilation got a physical pressing in 2016 by Enslaved themselves. So yeah, The Sleeping Gods is still around. You can still find it pretty easily.

Unfortunately, The Sleeping Gods never really got a ton of love in the live setting from Enslaved. Aside from “Heimvegen” being played 11 times in 2012, nothing else from the EP has ever made it to the stage.

Providence by Immolation (2011)

Immolation quickly followed up their 2010 record Majesty and Decay with an 18-minute EP called Providence on Scion A/V in 2011. And I mean, it’s Immolation — it’s top-tier death metal despite its brevity.

Immolation took Providence very seriously. In a 2012 interview with Metal Crypt, Immolation guitarist Bob Vigna said, “Well, first off, with this EP, we really wanted to make something special. Even though it was an EP and we could just have done some cover songs, we chose to make it more like a short album. To us, it was just as important as anything else we have done. So we went into it like we would any other album.”

Sadly, Providence is nowhere to be found online. You can still find some physical copies of it floating around on the internet, but they’re not super cheap. I find it kind of odd that this EP hasn’t been reissued in any capacity, considering Providence‘s opener, “What They Bring,” is Immolation‘s twelfth most played song live. You would think this EP would at least get a digital reissue or something, right?

The Bulls and the Bees by Melvins (2012)

The Bulls and the Bees falls right into the middle of what I personally think is Melvins’ best era, which is their double-drummer lineup of Dale Crover and Coady Willis. The Bulls and the Bees is five tracks of double-drummer, sludge-ridden riffage that, frankly, I think has two of Melvins’ best songs, which are “The War on Wisdom” and “We Are Doomed.”

The rest of the EP is a little hit or miss in that it’s some pretty experimental strangeness that could have been saved for a full-length, but whatever — Melvins has made a career out of being weird as hell, and this is no different.

Unlike some of the other releases that are gonna come up in this video, or have come up in this video, Melvins‘ The Bulls and the Bees is very available to this day. It’s packaged as a compilation on streaming services, that compilation is also available physically, and Amphetamine Reptile Records did a bunch of pressings of this back in 2012 that you can still find online for a pretty reasonable price.

Songs from The Bulls and the Bees also got played quite a bit live between 2012 and 2016. But I guess that’s not saying too much, considering Melvins play like 200 shows every year. So these songs were bound to come up.

Bloodhound by Witch Mountain (2012)

Witch Mountain should be about 20 times bigger than they are, or were. The band put out four fantastic doom records between 2000 and 2018, and that run of excellent riffage also includes the 2012 7” Bloodhound.

The 7” included the singles “Bloodhound” and “A Power Greater,” and featured the absolute powerhouse vocals of the great Uta Plotkin. I’m not sure that this 7” is the greatest place for new Witch Mountain fans to get into the band — that title is pretty specifically reserved for Witch Mountain’s 2012 full-length Cauldron of the Wild — but it’s still a nice companion to that record.

Bloodhound isn’t available anywhere online, and outside of the original 7” was only printed as bonus tracks on a few 2013 European vinyl pressings of Cauldron of the Wild. As far as live performances go, Witch Mountain only played “Bloodhound” the song twice in 2012.

Oh, and for everyone that’s gonna call me out for calling this the Bloodhound 7” and not the Witch Mountain 7” as it is usually referred to, I personally asked drummer Nate Carson what the name of the release is. He said they call it the Bloodhound 7”, so that’s what I’m calling it.

Teratogenesis by Revocation (2012)

It still blows my mind that some of the best music Revocation ever did was released on Scion A/V. Revocation’s 2012 EP Teratogenesis is five songs and 21 minutes of blistering, finger-breaking, spine-shattering death metal.

Teratogenesis was also the first time that Revocation ever used seven strings. In an interview with Heavy Blog is Heavy from 2013, Revocation frontman Dave Davidson was talking about the band’s then-upcoming new record, saying: “Yeah, actually the new album is mostly on sevens. I think there’s one song that’s a six-string all the way through, but everything else has seven strings. The Teratogenesis EP was the first time… It was essentially our introduction to seven strings on the title track.”

Teratogenesis was out of print for a little while, but Relapse Records reissued it in 2024 with a bunch of cover songs tacked on as bonus tracks. There haven’t been any more pressings of the EP since then, but Teratogenesis is still available on all streaming services as well.

“Teratogenesis” the track is also back in Revocation‘s live set and is one of their most played songs live. Of all the releases in this video, Teratogenesis is definitely one that has not fallen by the wayside.

Megalodon by Corrosion of Conformity (2012)

Corrosion of Conformity went on hiatus in 2006 and returned in 2010 without frontman Pepper Keenan. While Keenan would eventually come back in 2015, Corrosion of Conformity would soldier on as bassist and then-lead vocalist Mike Dean, guitarist and vocalist Woody Weatherman, and drummer and vocalist Reed Mullin.

That lineup would release a self-titled album in 2012, the exceedingly-rare Megalodon EP on Scion A/V in 2012, and then another record called IX in 2014.

Megalodon isn’t bad, but I’d hardly call it vital Corrosion of Conformity listening. Weatherman at least seemed happy about the EP at the time, saying in an interview with Revolver that Corrosion recorded the EP in “our hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, which is kind of nice to be able to go around in town and not have to go out somewhere, go to LA, or New York. Sometimes it’s nice to record at home. You get a little better vibe. Plus, I got to use all my own gear, so it was fun.”

But yeah, I mean, if you want to hear equal parts doom and punk from an era of Corrosion of Conformity that’s barely acknowledged these days, go give Megalodon a spin — if you can find it.

Megalodon is, unfortunately, nowhere to be found these days. It was never reissued, never made to be bonus tracks, nothing. Physical copies occasionally pop up on Discogs, but they’re exceedingly rare and super expensive when they do. So you’re just gonna have to settle for bad YouTube rips of this one.

And it’s not like Corrosion of Conformity has really made these songs known either. Since its release, Corrosion of Conformity played “Priest Brains” 28 times and “Strong Medicine Too Late” 16 times. All those performances took place between 2012 and 2014, and the other three songs on Megalodon remain unplayed to this day.

Lepers Caress by Arsis (2012)

Arsis remains one of the most criminally unsung American melodic death metal bands of all time. Sadly, their Lepers Caress EP, released in 2012 by Scion A/V, is obscure on top of Arsis being unsung — and it shouldn’t be. It’s a very good EP, and Arsis is, or was, a great band.

I actually found an old interview from right before Lepers Caress got announced, and the amount of time it took Arsis to put together an EP that’s this good is insane. In that interview, Arsis guitarist James Malone talked about how crazy it is that Arsis was putting out music alongside bands like Revocation and Corrosion of Conformity, before casually mentioning, “I am pretty certain all of those bands had more than a month to complete the project. We were stressed as hell, but are all happy with the way that it came out in the end.”

I mean, dude, one month for Lepers Caress. That’s insane. Also, hey, anyone in Arsis, if you’re watching this — can you come back please? It’s been seven years since your last album. Thanks.

The good news here is that at least you can find Lepers Caress online. Lepers Caress is included as a bunch of bonus tracks on both the digital and physical versions of Arsis’ 2013 album Unwelcome, but still, these seven tracks deserved more than just becoming some bonus tracks. As a standalone release, Lepers Caress is very good.

Arsis never really played these songs live much either. “Carve My Cross,” “Six Coffins Wide,” and “Haunted, Fragile, and Frozen” were the only three that ever made it to the stage, and they were only played 24 times total between all three songs.

Pitch Black by Meshuggah (2013)

Pitch Black is a wild addition to Swedish masters of 4/4 Meshuggah‘s discography, and one that doesn’t really come up very much.

The EP features the song “Pitch Black,” which was recorded back in 2003 right around the time that Meshuggah released their I EP. The song only credits two Meshuggah members: guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, who played both guitar and bass on this one, and drummer Tomas Haake, who also doubled as the band’s vocalist on this track.

If you liked Meshuggah‘s 2002 track “Spasm” in all its super weird trippiness but still obviously very heavy, you will like “Pitch Black.”

Pitch Black, the EP, also features a live recording of “Dancers to a Discordant System” recorded at Distortion Fest 2012 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Pitch Black isn’t available as a standalone release anywhere on streaming services, but that track and the live track are both tacked onto the remastered I EP that you can find online and on the 2014 CD and vinyl reissues of the I EP. “Pitch Black” – the song – has also never been played live. So it’s rare, but you can still find Pitch Black pretty easily.

Scion A/V Presents Red Fang by Red Fang (2014)

American stoner rock band Red Fang had a pretty busy 2013 and 2014. The band released their Whales and Leeches record in 2013, followed by an acoustic EP in 2014, alongside the Scion A/V Presents: Red Fang 7”. That 7” featured two new tracks named “The Meadows” and “The Shadows.” “The Meadows” was more of a sludgy stomper, while “The Shadows” was more of a straightforward rocker.

The 7” was available exclusively during Red Fang‘s Situation Awesome tour with Big Business and American Sharks, and was also given away by Relapse Records for a little while to anyone who bought Red Fang merchandise from them.

It’s also pretty clear which song Red Fang liked and which they didn’t. “The Shadows” was played live a handful of times between 2014 and 2017 and is the second track on Red Fang‘s 2025 rarities compilation Deep Cuts. “The Meadows,” however, was never played and appears nowhere else besides this 7”. At the very least, you can find the Scion A/V Presents: Red Fang 7” on streaming services. So there is that.

So there you go — a car brand had a really impressive release list when it came to metal and just generally heavier music.

Before I go, I do also want to give a shout-out to some of the live records that Scion A/V released. You had Live by Yob, released in 2012 and recorded on March 31, 2012, during the Scion Label Showcase for Profound Lore Records. You had Pallbearer Live by Pallbearer, which was recorded at the exact same show as the Yob live 10”. And you had Live by Saint Vitus, released in 2012 and recorded that same year at the Scion Rock Fest.

Yeah. Hopefully, this opened people’s eyes to the fact that, again, Scion A/V was a very cool label. They had a lot of really great releases. They had a lot of really great shows. And I just hope that people do remember that Scion A/V did a lot of cool stuff for heavier music.

Now go and try to hunt these releases down and listen to them. I’m sure you’ll hear something new.