Much of the time, EPs are bullshit. Haphazardly strewn together off-album tracks, leftovers and filler live material, one-off experiments that weren’t good enough to make the album, and so on. Can’t do anything else with it, so throw it on a 10-inch. New Hampshire’s Scissorfight, on the other hand, have always known the true value of the get-in-kick-ass-get-out style of releasing. I remember buying the CD of 2002’s Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare the day it came out at Compact Disc World on Rt. 10 in East Hanover — same place I bought the preceding album, 2001’s Mantrapping for Sport and Profit (discussed here); both were released on Hydra Head-offshoot Tortuga Recordings — and yeah, I was a little bummed it wasn’t another full-length. Until I put it on.

Comprised of five songs that run a combined 13 minutes, Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare barely feels as long as its title, but each track shines, from the thick snare hits that lead into the rush of the sub-two-minute “Hex,” which feels willfully annoying with its chorus line of “Sun reflecting in a flying crow’s eye” repeated in a hurry over and over as the riff comes through thick enough to make you forget it’s a punk song, or the woodsy stomp of “Riverhorse,” which remains one of the most memorable tracks Scissorfight have ever produced, be it during their initial run from 1995-2006 or the incarnation of the band that reunited in 2016 to release another EP, Chaos County (review here) and the 2019 full-length, Doomus Abruptus Vol. 1 (review here). I won’t deny the appeal of their rougher-in-production early work on albums like 1996’s Guaranteed Kill, 1998’s Balls Deep, or 2000’s New Hampshire, but Mantrapping for Sport and Profit saw a marked uptick in the level of production even as the band had already been working with engineer Andrew Schneider previously.

Whatever it was that turned out to be the difference, you can hear it in the songs. “Hex” is clear even as it’s kind of a mess (and knows it) — not as much as “Running the Risk of Raining Buffalo” a short time later, but still — and “Riverhorse,” “Maritime Disasters” and “Harvester” give this same era of Clutch a run for their money as regards songwriting while keeping a more aggressive attitude and you-might-get-punched threat level, with vocalist Chris “Ironlung” Shurtleff playing the role of deepwoods madman with guitarist Jay Fortin (aka Geezum H. Crow, aka Fuck You, etc.), bassist Paul Jarvis and drummer Kevin J. Shurtleff, as well as Craig Riggs (then of Roadsaw) and others backing. The band were never light on burl, be it in the vocals, riffs or anything else, but Ironlung‘s obscure pop culture references and sneering self-awareness gave another level of consideration to the absurdity.

And Scissorfight in this incarnation were that rare band who could not only pull off being hyper-dudely and still laugh at themselves for it — which is like the temporal paradox of masculinity — but the material they wrote had more to it than just attitude. “Blood on the road/And the road is on fire” is the chorus of “Riverhorse,” and as they sneak a harmonized backing line into that swinging delivery, the four-minute tune becomes an anthem in favor of recklessness. It and the “I am a lighthouse” declarations of “Maritime Disasters” and the rings-in-my-head-anytime-someone-mentions-the-word-“harvest” repetitions of “Harvester/Harvester/Harvester/Unconventional harvester” in “Harvester” put the emphasis right where it needs to be — on no-bullshit heavy crunch, likewise laced with acid and fuckall — and in 13 minutes’ time, they steamroll an album’s worth of everything like it turned out the magic secret of EPs all along was that you needed to make them good. Who knew?

Actually, by then, Scissorfight knew, and maybe the knowledge is part of what makes Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare work so well — Scissorfight at this point had four or five LPs under their collective belt depending on what you count and could fuck around without losing the plot — as each song feels like it has room to breathe and something to offer apart from the others while still being packed in enough so that the five of them are done in less than 15 minutes, not close to a full-length release and not trying to be one, but still fluid in the procession from “Hex” into “Riverhorse,” through “Maritime Disasters,” “Running the Risk of Raining Buffalo” and “Harvester.” They could sound like they were flipping off the entire world — because they were — and convince the listener that not only were they genuine in that, but that it was the only logical response for an existence gone mad. They occupied their own place in heavy, right on the line between rock and metal, Southern and… unleaded? I don’t know, but you get the idea. And they owned the EP format.

That began with Piscataqua in 2000, though that was mostly covers, and would continue splits with Cave In and Pelican and two more standalone EPs, 2003’s Deathchants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes Vol. 2 — there was no Vol. 1, mind you — and 2005’s Victory Over Horseshit before they got around to issuing the final album of their initial run, 2006’s Jaggernaut, which took the slickness of the 2001 full-length and refined it further while sticking to the essentials of Scissorfight‘s efficient, in-your-face craft. I don’t know what led to their breakup — legend has it Ironlung did too much acid and disappeared; I like to imagine he finished his Ph.D. and is Dr. Shurtleff to a bunch of university students somewhere who have no clue he used to “Outmotherfucker the Man” on the regular — but when they came back with Doug Aubin on vocals and Rick Orcutt on drums, Scissorfight held onto a lot of what had worked so well about their original run while emphasizing the heft of tone one can hear on Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare even as they make it move in “Running the Risk of Raining Buffalo.”

Like a lot of their catalog, this EP is begging for reissue, but if you can get the original CD, there’s a recording of Ironlung trying out the vocal pronunciations for the German-language version of “New Hampshire’s Alright if You Like Fighting” (from Mantrapping), and that’s pretty golden as well. I’m still glad to have my copy.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Today is the last day of ice skating camp for The Pecan. I know, another camp. She hasn’t gotten kicked out, or even needed to be picked up early, though, which has been pretty huge for us, in addition to being the reason I was able to give four records a full review this week. Next week is all mapped out, but not quite so ambitious. I do what I can when I can. Half-day skate camp has been a win and hopefully she can pull that through to the last day as well, despite the inevitable big feelings as a result of it being that same last day. Fingers crossed.

We’re basically settled back into New Jersey from being away a decent portion of the summer between June and July. The Patient Mrs. is getting ready for the Fall semester at work, The Pecan starts school the day after Labor Day, we’ve agreed to host Thanksgiving again, so yeah, preparing for a busy next season, still tired from the last, but moving forward. My mother came for dinner last night. Today’s a big Costco trip and maybe the Parsippany farmer’s market. Tomorrow is family birthday stuff. Sunday, recovery and maybe some swimming if we can.

Yesterday we went and saw the Holmdel Horn, which if you want to look it up was the radio telescope that confirmed the existence of the cosmic microwave background, essentially proving the Big Bang in the early 1960s. There was a fight because someone wanted to turn it into condos. The town of Holmdel — about 50 minutes from where we live — agreed to turn it into a park instead, since it’s a national landmark. But that hasn’t happened yet, so taking The Pecan and her massive current interest in all things astrophysics to see it involved a bit of light-trespassing. No regrets. It was an impressive sight, and when we saw it in the book we were reading while she ate breakfast this morning, she got excited because we’d been there. Nobody got arrested. Totally worth it. We’ll go back when/if the park opens.

Beyond that, it’s been plugging away at work, trying to catch up at stuff from while we were in Budapest. I need to vacuum, do laundry, but these are pretty constant. The routine I guess has a comfort level about it.

Whatever you’re up to this weekend, I hope it’s fun and that you stay safe and hydrate. Waning summer is still summer, but we’re coming into my favorite time of year here, once the humidity goes. In any case, thanks for reading and I’ll be back on Monday with more these-type shenanigans.

FRM.

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Tags: New Hampshire, Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare, Scissorfight, Scissorfight Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare, Tortuga Recordings

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