Of all the discographies of all the heavy bands who’ve come and gone in the last 30 years, how many can be so in need of reissue as Scissorfight‘s? The New Hampshire riffpunchers were put to bed with a couple blowout evenings in the Granite State just this past week, nine years after first reuniting following a decade’s absence and lineup shift, so now would of course be the perfect time for a whole bunch of people to get into them. Just saying.

What was once a band released what’s still an album on what was once a label. New Hampshire, which was the third Scissorfight LP behind 1996’s Guaranteed Kill and 1998’s Balls Deep, came out through Hydra Head-offshoot Tortuga Recordings in 2000, and though it remains raw in its basic impression, it nonetheless represents the point at which they hit their stride. With production by Andrew Schneider, in Patrick Bateman terms, it’s where they started to come into their own, solidifying the aggression of their earlier outings around intermittently pummeling riffery and a fervent sense of in-the-country shenanigans, old movie references and hooks, hooks, hooks, piled on like dudes probably were this past weekend trying to get the mic to sing “The Ballad of Jacco Macacco.”

The band at the time was comprised of vocalist Chris “Ironlung” Shurtleff, guitarist James Jay Fortin (aka Geezum H. Crow, aka Fuck You), bassist Paul Jarvis, and drummer Kevin J. Strongbow (né Shurtleff; he and Ironlung were brothers), and of all the heavy rock made in the years on either side of what the ancients called Y2K, the place they occupied was their own. And no, I don’t mean they were the only heavy band in New Hampshire. But the state did become a pivotal part of their identity — this record opens with “Granite State Destroyer” (“Weed, guns and axes/We don’t pay our taxes…”) and they would uphold the mantle of the Granite State Destroyers until finally putting it down six nights ago at The Shaskeen — and became part of their persona. To employ the stereotype, as the song does, if New Hampshire is where New England keeps its “keep your government off my lawn” libertarians and all the weirdos too aggro to qualify for Vermont, Scissorfight embodied this ethic with mischievous glee and duly violent tendencies.

Burl was always a part of Scissorfight‘s aesthetic, and for being so pointedly Northern, both the lyrics and Fortin‘s riffing had plenty in common with Southern heavy rock, and no, they weren’t the first to enter that conversation. Scissorfight were also punks. The longest song on the 11-track/40-minute New Hampshire is “Musk Ox” at 5:39. “Granite State Destroyer” and the aforementioned “The Ballad of Jacco Macacco,” which follows, are under three minutes each, as are “Roman Boxing Glove” and “The Gruesome Death of Edward Teach.” They were not a band to dwell, but one to kick ass and get out. But where the first two records were more stridently pissed off and raw, New Hampshire began to balance this with groove and melody. Ironlung‘s vocals were of the large-man-with-a-large-voice variety, and he could move between a growling ultra-sneer, semi-spoken verse lines, and grew over time as a singer as one will. These songs are an early but crucial part of that process.

“Billy Jack Attack” is where I learned that movie existed — see also Rob Crow‘s Goblin Cock, with “Ode to Billy Jack” some years later — and cuts like “Lamprey River” and the sludgy “Cycloptic Skull” aren’t about genre, or about trying to sound like some other band or do some other thing. They’re ‘living free.’ The quality of songwriting was always Scissorfight‘s not-at-all-secret-when-you-listen weapon. As a lyricist, Ironlung gave Clutch‘s Neil Fallon a run for his money in pieces like “The Gruesome Death of Edward Teach” and “Mountain Man Boogie,” which to-cowbell recounts the story of a guy named Hugh Glass who “found his ass in the jaws of a grizzly.” Backing vocals there from Jill Kurtz (who also appears elsewhere on the album) add a twist to the penultimate track, and it, together with closer “Dead Thunderbird,” were prescient of how Scissorfight would continue to develop for the next six years, which would see them release three full-lengths, three EPs, two splits and live record before 2006’s Jaggernaut brought their original run to a finish.

I’ve spent some time lauding their 2001 album, Mantrapping for Sport and Profit (discussed here) and its 2022 companion-piece EP, Potential New Agent for Unconventional Warfare (discussed here), and I guess I’d argue for that era as the peak of the original lineup era — what I heard was that Ironlung had written a Ph.D. dissertation on acid in pop culture; I’m pretty sure the EP title is an LSD reference, and not at all the band’s first — but New Hampshire was more than an important step on the way. It remains a defining moment for Scissorfight, a declaration of identity and persona, and a collection of killer, hard-hitting, heavy-as-the-Great-North-Woods songs that unrepentant in their destruction. They were always a ton of fun.

Things were different when they came back, with Doug Aubin on vocals — the lore on Ironlung‘s whereabouts is vague; not quite Syd Barret, but purposefully AWOL just the same — and Rick Orcutt on drums, but they were still Scissorfight. In 2016, the Chaos County EP (review here) on Salt of the Earth Records served as righteous proof of concept, and 2019’s Doomus Abruptus Vol. 1 (review here) added to their legacy of shenanigans-laced “backwoods motherfuckery” (as they once put it). They went to Europe for the EP, and it was a thrill to see them alongside Backwoods Payback in one of the smaller rooms at Roadburn 2017 (review here), but New England was always where they landed hardest, whichever lineup you want to talk about.

Last Fall, they celebrated 30 years of the band, which even with a decade break in there, is a not-insignificant accomplishment on the part of Fortin and Jarvis. The latter has been doing solo gigs for at least the last couple years, I’m pretty sure, and Fortin has a new band going called Motomags (who played at the last Shaskeen show) and one or two other projects, so music will continue to happen, even if the story of Scissorfight has come to its deservedly ceremonious end.

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

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A lot going on and I’m light on time, so my intention is to keep this short. Already we’ve been back and forth to the school this morning for a meeting, and Wednesday was the big one where we had the IEP surprise-dropped like the last Sleep record on us, which was kind of shitty (not the Sleep record; that was great), and so The Patient Mrs. has been going through that and we’ve been gathering thoughts and back and forth and long emails and blah blah. It’s a lot. It’s been a lot. It continues to be a lot.

Next week, an Insomniac review, a Yawning Man premiere, and a lot of figuring out I’m going to do over the weekend. If you’ve emailed me in the last couple days and not heard back (which is just about everyone who’s emailed), I’m sorry. That’ll be tomorrow, I hope.

Let’s do a Zelda update for fun: The Pecan continues to enjoy the Challenge Mode mod for Tears of the Kingdom, slaughtering golden enemies and the god of Lynels like the pro she is. I’ve been ‘doing a playthrough’ — by which I mean me and my cheat codes and my walkthrough — of the GameCube version of Twilight Princess on my laptop with a graphics mod that makes it look way better, and enjoying that, except that the cheats I was using softlocked the game and I lost nine hours of mostly tedious poe-hunting and item-getting and had to go back.

I didn’t even get to pull the Master Sword again, which was satisfying in the game, and I’m back a dungeon and a bunch of sidequests. Last weekend, The Patient Mrs. took The Pecan to CT for the day so I got myself good and stoned and spent some time digging in. All that stuff I did I need to do over. I like the game, I just wish I didn’t have to get those poe souls again, as it’s a pain in the ass to wait for nighttime and it will take much longer the second time in real-life time because I’ll be doing it in like 40-minute spurts instead of four or five straight hours. I haven’t had much time with Tears of the Kingdom as the kid has been on it. I told The Patient Mrs. the other day we might need a second gamecard. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment comes out I think in November. I imagine maybe we’ll make an Xmas present of it, but it skews a little older, so we’ll see.

That’s it for me. Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, be safe. Fuck fascism and its perpetrators. Free what’s left of Palestine.

FRM.

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Welcome to the Quarterly Review. Oh, you were here last time? Me too. All door prizes will be mailed to winning parties upon completion of, uh, everything, I guess?

Anywhazzle, the good news is this week is gonna have 50 releases covered between now — the 10 below — and the final batch of 10 this Friday. I’m trying to sneak in a bunch of stuff ahead of year-end coverage, yes, but let the urgency of my doing so stand as testament to the quality of the music contained in this particular Quarterly Review. If I didn’t feel strongly about it, surely I’d find some other way to spend my time.

That said, let’s not waste time. You know the drill, I know the drill. Just don’t be surprised when some of the stuff you see here, today, tomorrow, and throughout the week, ends up in the Best of 2024 when the time comes. I have no idea what just yet, but for sure some of it.

We go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

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Gnome, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome

Some bands write songs for emotional catharsis. Some do it to make a political statement. Gnome‘s songs feel specifically — and expertly — crafted to engage an audience, and their third full-length, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome, underscores the point. Hooks like “Old Soul” and “Duke of Disgrace” offer a self-effacing charm, where elsewhere the Antwerp trio burn through hot-shit riffing and impact-minded slam metal with a quirk that, if you’ve caught wind of the likes of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol or Howling Giant in recent years, should fit nicely among them while finding its own sonic niche in being able to, say, throw a long sax solo on second cut “The Ogre” or veer into death growls for the title line of “Rotten Tongue” and others. They make ‘party riff metal’ sound much easier to manifest than it probably is, and the reason their reputation precedes them at this point goes right back to the songwriting. They hit hard, they get in, get out, it’s efficient when it wants to be but can still throw a curve with the stop and pivot in “Rotten Tongue,” running a line between punk and stoner, rock and metal, your face and the floor. It might actually be too enjoyable for some, but the funk they bring here is infectious. They make the riffs dance, and everything goes from there.

Gnome on Instagram

Polder Records website

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Hermano, When the Moon Was High…

The lone studio track “Breathe” serves as the reasoning behind Hermano‘s first new release since 2007’s …Into the Exam Room (discussed here), and actually predates that still-latest long-player by some years. Does it matter? Yeah, sort of. As regards John Garcia‘s post-Kyuss career, Hermano both got fleshed out more than most (thinking bands like Unida and Slo Burn, even Vista Chino, that didn’t get to release three full-lengths in their time), and still seemed to fade out when there was so much potential ahead of them. If “Breathe” doesn’t argue in favor of this band giving it the proverbial “one more go,” perhaps the live version of “Brother Bjork” (maybe the same one featured on 2005’s Live at W2?) and a trio of cuts captured at Hellfest in 2016 should do the trick nicely. They’re on fire through “Senor Moreno’s Plan,” “Love” and “Manager’s Special,” with Garcia, Dandy Brown, David Angstrom, Chris Leathers and Mike Callahan treating Clisson to a reminder of why they’re the kind of band who might get to build an entire EP around a leftover studio track — because that studio track, and the band more broadly, righteously kick their own kind of ass. What would a new album be like?

Ripple Music on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Stahv, Sentiens Eklektikos

Almost on a per-song basis, Stahv — the mostly-solo brainchild of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Solomon Arye Rosenschein, here collaborating on production with John Getze of Ako-Lite Records — skewers and melds genres to create something new from their gooey remnants. On the opening title-track, maybe that’s a post-industrial Phil Collins set to dreamtime keyboard and backed by fuzzy drone. On “Lunar Haze,” it’s all goth ’80s keyboard handclaps until the chorus melody shines through the fog machine like The Beatles circa ’64. Yeah that’s right. And on “Bossa Supernova,” you bet your ass it’s bossa nova. “The Calling” reveals a rocker’s soul, where “Plainview” earlier on has a swing that might draw from The Birthday Party at its root (it also might not) but has its own sleek vibe just the same with a far-back, lo-fi buzz that somehow makes the melody sound better. “Aaskew” (sic) takes a hard-funkier stance musically but its outsider perspective in the lyrics is similar. The 1960s come back around in the later for “Circuit Crash” — it would have to be a song about the future — and “Leaving Light” seems to make fun of/celebrate (it can be both) that moment in the ’80s when everything became tropical. There’s worlds here waiting for ears adventurous enough to hear them.

Stahv on Facebook

Ako-Lite Records on Bandcamp

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Space Shepherds, Cycler

I mean, look. The central question you really have to ask yourself is how mellow do you want to get? Do you think you can handle 12 minutes of “Transmigration?” Do you think you can be present in yourself through that cool-as-fuck, ultra-smooth psychedelic twist Space Shepherds pull off, barely three minutes into the the beginning of this seven-track, 71-minute pacifier to quiet the bad voices in your (definitely not my) brain. What’s up with that keyboard shuffle in “Celestial Rose” later on? I don’t know, but it rules. And when they blow it out in “Got Caught Dreaming?” Yeah, hell yeah, wake up! “Free Return” is a 15-minute drifter jam that gets funky in the back half (a phrase I’d like on a shirt) and you don’t wanna miss it! At the risk of spoiling it, I’ll tell you that the title-track, which closes, is absolutely the payoff it’s all asking for. If you’ve got the time to sit with it, and you can just sort of go where it’s going, Cycler is a trip begging to be taken.

Space Shepherds on Facebook

Space Shepherds on Bandcamp

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King Botfly, All Hail

It is all very big. All very grand, sweeping and poised musically, very modern and progressive and such — and immediately it has something if that’s what you’re looking for, which is super-doper, thanks — but if you dig into King Botfly‘s vocals, there’s a vulnerability there as well that adds an intimacy to all that sweep and plunges down the depths of the spacious mix’s low end. And I’m not knocking that part of it either. The Portsmouth, UK-based three-piece of guitarist/vocalist George Bell, bassist Luke Andrew and drummer Darren Draper, take on a monumental task in terms of largesse, and they hit hard when they want to, but there’s dynamic in it too, and both has an edge and doesn’t seem to go anywhere it does without a reason, which is a hard balance to strike. They sound like a band who will and maybe already have learned from this and will use that knowledge to move forward in an ongoing creative pursuit. So yes, progressive. Also tectonically heavy. And with heart. I think you got it. They’ll be at Desertfest London next May, and they sound ready for it.

King Botfly on Facebook

King Botfly on Bandcamp

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Last Band, The Sacrament in Accidents

Are Last Band a band? They sure sound like one. Founded by guitarists Pat Paul and Matt LeGrow (the latter also of Admiral Browning) upwards of 15 years ago, when they were less of an actual band, the Maryland-based outfit offer 13 songs of heavy alternative rock on The Sacrament in Accidents, with some classic metal roots shining through amid the harmonies of “Saffire Alice” and a denser thrust in “Season of Outrage,” a rush in the penultimate “Forty-Four to the Floor,” and so on, where the title-track is more of an open sway and “Lidocaine” is duly placid, and while the production is by no means expansive, the band convey their songs with intent. Most cuts are in the three-to-four-minute range, but “Blown Out” dips into psychedelic-gaze wash as the longest at 5:32 offset by comparatively grounded, far-off Queens of the Stone Age-style vocalizing in the last minute, which is an effective culmination. The material has range and feels worked on, and while The Sacrament in Accidents sounds raw, it hones a reach that feels true to a songwriting methodology evolved over time.

Last Band on Bandcamp

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Dream Circuit, Pennies for Your Life

Debuting earlier this decade as a solo-project of Andrew Cox, Seattle’s Dream Circuit have built out to a four-piece for with Pennies for Your Life, which throughout its six-track/36-minute run sets a contemplative emotionalist landscape. Now completed by Anthony Timm, Cody Albers and Ian Etheridge, the band are able to move from atmospheric stretches of classically-inspired-but-modern-sounding verses into heavier tonality on a song like “Rosy” with fluidity that seems to save its sweep for when it counts. The title-track dares some shouts, giving some hint of a metallic underpinning, but that still rests well in context next to the sitar sounds of “Let Go,” which opens at 4:10 into its own organ-laced crush, emotionally satisfying. Imagine a post-heavy rock that’s still pretty heavy, and a dynamic that stretches across microgenres, and maybe that will give some starting idea. The last two tracks argue for efficiency in craft, but wherever Dream Circuit go on this sophomore release, they take their own route to get there.

Dream Circuit on Facebook

Dream Circuit on Bandcamp

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Okkoto, All is Light

“All is Light” is the first single from New Paltz bliss-drone meditationalist solo outfit Okkoto since 2022’s stellar and affirming Climb the Antlers and Reach the Stars (review here), and its seven minutes carry a similar scope to what one found on that album. To be clear, that’s a compliment. Interwoven threads of synth over methodical timekeeping drum sounds, wisps of airy guitar drawn together with other lead lines, keys or strings, create a flowing world around the vocals added by Michael Lutomski, also (formerly?) of heavy psych rockers It’s Not Night: It’s Space, the sole proprietor of the expanse. A lot of a given listener’s experience of Okkoto experience will depend on their own headspace, but if you have the time and attention — seven-plus minutes of active-but-not-too-active hearing recommended — but “All is Light” showcases the rare restorative aspects of Okkoto in a way that, if you can get to it, can make you believe, or at least escape for a little while.

Okkoto on Instagram

Okkoto on Bandcamp

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Trappist Afterland, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden

Underscored with a earth-rooted folkish fragility in the voice of Adam Geoffrey Cole (also guitar, cittern, tanpura, oud, synth, xylophone and something called a ‘dulcitar’), Melbourne’s Trappist Afterland are comfortably adventurous on this 10th full-length, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden, which digs deeper into psych-drone on longest track “Cruciform/The Reincarnation of Kelly-Anne (Parts 1-3)” (7:55) while elsewhere digs into fare more Eastern-influenced-Western-traditional, largely based around guitar composition. With an assortment of collaborators coming and going, even this is enough for Cole and his seemingly itinerant company to create a sense of variety — the violin in centerpiece “Barefoot in Thistles” does a lot of work in that regard; ditto the squeezebox of opener “The Squall” — and while the arrangements don’t lack for flourish, the human expression is paramount, and the nine songs are serene unto the group vocal that caps in “You Are Evergreen,” which would seem to be placed to highlight its resonance, and reasonably so. As it’s Trappist Afterland‘s 10th album by their own count, it’s hardly a surprise they know what they’re about, but they do anyway.

Trappist Afterland on Facebook

Trappist Afterland on Bandcamp

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Big Muff Brigade, Pi

For a band who went so far as to name themselves after a fuzz pedal, Spain’s Big Muff Brigade have more in common with traditional desert rock than the kind of tonal worship one might expect them to deliver. That landscape doesn’t account for their naming a song “Terre Haute,” seemingly after the town in Indiana — I’ve been there; not a desert — but fair enough for the shove of that track, which on Pi arrives just ahead of closer “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” which builds to a nonetheless-mellow payoff before its fadeout. Elsewhere, the seven-minute “Pierced by the Spear” drops Sleepy (and thus Sabbathian) references in the guitar ahead of creating a duly stonerly lumber before they even unfurl the first verse — a little more in keeping with the kind of riff celebration one might expect going in — but even there, the band maintain a thread of purposeful songcraft that can only continue to serve them as they move past this Argonauta-delivered debut and continued to grow. There is a notable sense of outreach here, though, and in writing to genre, Big Muff Brigade show both their love of what they do and a will to connect with likeminded audiences.

Big Muff Brigade on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

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Portsmouth, UK, extreme sludge metallers Grim Ravine will unveil the filthy revelry of their second album, Upon the Darkest Shores, on Sept. 22, aka this Friday. Aural punishment, song execution as physical catharsis, nasty, nasty fucking feedback — all of these and a heaping dose of subduction volcano tonality result in a misanthropic, mournful and, yes, colossal — as in opening track “Colossal Matter,” which establishes a brooding mood before casting forth its full dole of violence.

It is not unipolar, not just one thing, but like Grim Ravine‘s 2020 debut, It’s a Long Way Down, to Where You Are — which seems to have been made with a different lineup — it is defined by a multi-tiered, multifaceted aggression, and whether a given part is fast or slow, the char-smelling blastbeats of the later cut “Organic Corruption” or the brutalized punker plod of “Portend,” just three and a half minutes long and one of the harshest vibes present. And in context, that means something.

Because what Grim Ravine most do is wield their material like a double-sided, two-handed sledgehammer swung with destructive intent at any and all is their path. Less noisy than Primitive Man, not as solely longform as Whitehorse, and not as riff-led as Come to Grief, they’re nonetheless noisy, mostly on the longer end of sub-10-minutes — the exception is the closer “Orogenesis,” which uses the last two and a half of its 10:28 to let a post-apocalyptic drone spread over the landscape they just salted —  and led by riffs, but in quiet stretches like the semi-spoken comedown in the first half of “Xenolith” or the momentary pauses in the assault of the aforementioned “Organic Corruption,” the apparent trio find a niche for themselves in a sea of knife-toothed megasludge outfits.

But such positioning doesn’t account for the character of a song like Upon the Darkest Shores‘ centerpiece, “Singularity” — which would just about have to be in the middle if it wasn’t going to be the end — either in the balance of hypnosis and subdued tension-build at the start, or the roiling half-speed Pig Destroyer (I actually went and tried this: it’s not the truest comparison in the universe, but neither is it entirely inaccurate) churn that ensues before the track opens to an angular nod that would seem to assure the gravitational standard is met. One way or the other, Grim Ravine are more than the sum of their genre.

By the time they come to the penultimate “Tattered Mantle,” the pattern is set and the band are able to manipulate it to serve their purposes. The track hints toward a middle ground between full-on deathbringing and just-brought-death stillness in some of its drawn guitar lines around three minutes in, and “Singularity” seemed on an almost unconscious level to do likewise in its back end, but as noted above, it is the fact that Upon the Darkest Shores sounds so remarkably, intensely, existentially pissed off that will ensnare those listeners not immediately alienated by their sound. Most will be.

There’s no way, of course, that the band doesn’t know that. One does not compose “Portend” for a mass audience, or maybe not for an audience at all. I doubt Grim Ravine would argue if anyone wanted to come along on their tour-de-cruelty — otherwise why make a record at all? — but the prevailing spirit of Upon the Darkest Shores is inward. For someone hearing it — have fun! — obviously the experience is about how the songs make them feel. For the band, it seems to be the same.

It’s how their music makes them feel — that force behind their air-push guitar and bass, the roll of drums in “Orogenesis” and the guttural dismay of the vocals. I’m not saying Grim Ravine don’t have an interest in growing their listenership, just that beyond a certain point, the crust, weight and anger of what they do is going to be too much for some.

I promise you, this will be obvious after the first couple minutes of Upon the Darkest Shores, and whether you’ve heard the band before or not — I hadn’t, if it helps — they’re not trying to hide or get away with anything. They’re coming right at you with it.

So ahead of Friday, here it is in its entirety.

Good luck:

Grim Ravine, Upon the Darkest Shores album premiere

Preorder link: https://cursedmonk.bandcamp.com/album/upon-the-darkest-shores

Formed in Portsmouth in 2015, Grim Ravine combines the harrowing unpleasantness of genres such as doom, sludge and black metal with moments of serene melody to bleak and devastating effect.

In 2015 they released their debut self-titled EP through Hibernacula Records, and their 2nd EP “The Light Is From Below” through Black Bow Records in 2017.

In 2020, they released the debut album “The Light Is From Below” which had been recorded at both The Old Chapel, and PA Studios with producer Paul “Win” Winstanley (Sea Bastard/King Leviathan/Core of IO).

Entering the studio in 2022, Grim Ravine recorded ‘Upon The Darkest Shores’ at Brighton Electric Studios with long-standing producer Paul “Win” Winstanley.

Tracklisting
1. Colossal Matter
2. Xenolith
3. Portend
4. Singularity
5. Organic Corruption
6. Tattered Mantle
7. Orogenesis

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Grim Ravine on Instagram

Grim Ravine on Bandcamp

Grim Ravine Linktr.ee

Cursed Monk Records website

Cursed Monk Records on Facebook

Cursed Monk Records on Instagram

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