Sure the provenance is stellar: somewhat up and out of the ashes of hardcore’s best and brightest, SCATTERBOX has their knotty roots almost knuckle deep into the heart of the fast and frenetic Sound of 1981. Which is where it should be placed if you had any sense, any sense of authenticity or any common sense at all. So, there are BS detectors and there are bullshit detectors and if you lived through 1981 the best ones are the ones on the sides of your head. You see the ears are what keep you from thinking [wrongly so] that any band AFTER 1983 was worth any sort of g**da**ed thing. Like dirty hippies and old jazzbos trying to tell you that ain’t shit happened after Janis or Miles, this type of logic comes from the gut. But it comes from the gut because the ears are not listening.

Which is why this SCATTERBOX s*** appeals so much. It has successfully tricked the ear of yesteryear that it’s at Ruthies, or the Wilson Center, or A7, or Rajis. It’s distilled all of what was cool about hearing this s*** for the first time and managed to not make you feel bad about it THIS time. F***ing real deal? G**da**ed right. Vintage AND new the music rises above the merely nostalgic to make you want to spray paint the walls, grab your skate, and f*** s*** up. And with several and copious nods to post-punk sensibilities [via song titles, design aesthetic], it dawns that SCATTERBOX should be a lot bigger than they are with their heartfelt pre-post take on all of the loud fast rules. But they should be a lot of things probably: not living in Idaho, getting real and paying jobs, cutting out that racket. However, it would be our sincere hope that they continue existing for the sheer and pure fact that they make hard music to play well look easy and sound like they f***ing mean it in the process, which is much, much more than 98 percent of the things you’ll hear this week that’ll work their way into your brain pans.

Hardcore the way hardcore was played when it meant something to play it. We love these f***ing guys. And you should too.

--EUGENE S. ROBINSON (www.eugenesrobinson.com)