Scatterbox

Scatterbox from Coeur d’Alene, ID & Seattle, WA

SCATTERBOX – A Pseudo-Biography.
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 bullshit 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 goddamned 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 shit 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 shit for the first
time and managed to not make you feel bad about it THIS time.
Fucking real deal? Goddamned right.
Vintage AND new the music rises above the merely nostalgic to make you want to spray paint the walls,
grab your skate, and fuck shit 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 fucking 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 fucking guys.
And you should too.
--EUGENE S. ROBINSON (Author, Oxbow, Bunuel, Whipping Boy)