If I broke something every time I wanted to this year while listening to Clamfight‘s superb self-released masterpiece of fuck-shit-uppery, Volume I, I’m pretty sure I’d have no possessions left. Even things that you don’t normally think of breaking, I’d have gotten to. Like shoes, or the ceiling. Somehow, although I’ve probably been through this record a hundred times by now, I’ve managed to restrain myself, and my material life as I know it remains intact… but there’s always the next time.

“Fuck Bulldozers,” “Viking Funeral,” the stellar “Ghosts I Have Known” and “Swordfishing is an Ancient and Noble Art”; it was like Clamfight were doing me a personal favor by writing these songs. As though they sat down and said, “Oh here you go, big guy. You’ll like this.” And they were right. I fucking loved it. I knew when I first heard it that Volume I was going to be my favorite unsigned release of 2010, and it absolutely was.

Lethal. Fucking. Groove. Stay tuned in 2011 for release news about their next album, and if you haven’t picked up Volume I, get in touch with the band via their Facebook to do so. I know I recommend a lot of records on this site, but if you’ve ever been into sludge, thrash or that which is stonerly, and you miss out on Clamfight, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. Go ahead and take a listen. You deserve it.

Last Friday night, as I drunkenly slobbered all over Clamfight after their set at Philly‘s Millcreek Tavern — after watching drummer/vocalist Andy Martin puke on himself WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT — the news of the night came in the form of an honest to goodness physical copy of their album, Volume I.

You might recall I included the record in my Top Five of the First Half of 2010 without verifying it was actually out, and shame on me, because it wasn’t. Well, it is now, and I can safely say it’s still one of the best records I’ve heard all year.

Go here to get a copy of the album, because I know for a fact they’ve got them, and I know for a fact that if you miss it your life will suck forever. More to come on these dudes, but they’re playing again in Philly on Sept. 25, so there’s that.

It’s a rare band that can blend brutality and groove, good times and hard hits, and Clamfight do it so well they couldn’t have been born to do anything else. The New Jersey clan’s first full-length outing, Vol. 1, was years in the making and riffs has hard, rumbles as deep and crashes as loud as anything I’ve heard this year.

Plus, it has the kind of artwork where you might see it in a store, buy it for a kid because it looks adorable and then scar said child for life with “Fuck Bulldozers” or “Viking Funeral.” And, as we all know, any music that induces trauma in the young is a good thing. Childrens could use a kick in the ass.

But even that’s not what ultimately got Clamfight on the TFFH10 list. And it’s not the fact that I know them either. What ultimately did it was a song like “Ghosts I Have Known,” which in addition to being concrete heavy is also a display of the band’s songwriting prowess. Sure, we can all get down with the pummel of “Rabbit,” and that’s a great time, but there’s more to Vol. 1 than that, and it’s right there for anyone willing to hear it.

Because this was an album that I’d waited for, and because it’s one that, even after the review, I’ve gone back to time and again for what I’ve pathetically come to classify as “enjoyment listens,” I’m glad to have Clamfight‘s Vol. 1 on my top five of the first half of 2010.

Here’s a fun game I’d recommend playing with Vol. 1, the debut full-length from Westmont, New Jersey, metallers Clamfight. You take the main riff to album opener “Fuck Bulldozers” (which you can hear on their MySpace; you’ll know the riff I’m talking about when it comes on), and in time with it’s monstrously-proportioned groove, you say the word “bananas.” It works out to something like, “Ba-nanas, ba-na-nas, ba-nanas, ba-na-nas, ba-nanas, ba-na-nas, BA-NA-NAS.” Good fucking times, my friend.

Clamfight are my favorite unsigned, non-pedigreed American band. I say this with zero pretense of impartiality. I know them, consider them friends, and am glad to say I’ve seen them perform on more occasions than I can count. Sound-wise, I put them in a similar category as Oklahoma City rockers Bloodcow, but the more abrasive shouts of Clamfight drummer/vocalist Andy Martin, peppered on “Ghosts I Have Known” with deathly growling, add a dimension of metallic heaviness that offsets the stonerly riffs and lead work of guitarists Joel Harris and Sean McKee. Captured on Vol. 1 by engineer Steve Poponi of NJ’s Gradwell House studio, all the elements that make up Clamfight sound clear and professional without sacrificing the immediacy or hunger in the material.

The band credits Poponi with much of the album’s outcome, but there’s no denying that the Southern shuffle of “Swordfishing is an Ancient and Noble Art” comes from the players themselves. The nautical fascinations of Martin play out across several of Vol. 1’s tracks, informing the lyrics to “Sowrdfishing,” the aforementioned “Ghosts I Have Known,” and more loosely, closer “Viking Funeral.” “Ghosts I Have Known” is my personal pick of the record, as the tempo slows a bit, Martin successfully attempts a cleaner vocal approach for the verses than on the track previous (the chorus being where the growling happens), and the songwriting feels tightest and shows the band has more to offer than the pounding grooves they’ve so far offered. Though, for most acts, said pounding grooves would be enough. But as Clamfight kicks into the thrashy last two minutes of the song, the ease with which they transition speaks to a sonic diversity still just developing among Harris, McKee, Martin and bassist Louis Koble.

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