Review: Scissorfight “Mantrapping For Fun and Profit”

Scissorfight
“Mantrapping For Fun and Profit”
(Tortuga Records)

Bizarre rock, this is.  The vocals have a spoken abstractness to them very much like a little known band called Tack–but if you are familiar, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  This is big ol’ garage mosh loudness on the gruff choruses.  The rocking charm comes from the guitars that can jump up and down on a rock crunch and bounce, or throw down a pint of Jack Daniels and riff out on a stonier rock jam, usually accomplished by more Nugent-esque single note jamming.  The Mike Patton (Faith No More/Mr. Bungle) mentality (and even small vocal cue) can be felt often.  “The most dangerous animal is me” and vocalist Ironlung sounds like a stoner Glen Danzig.  Ironlung likes to get abstract with things like, “Candy… Candy… CANDAAAAAAY” (from Candy Clark, which isn’t so abstract when lyrics are read, but when delivered in song form, head scratches and looks of ‘What the fuck is this guy yelling about’ are common).  But sometimes the deranged repetition works well, like with the next tune “Go Cave!  Go Cave! Go Cave!” followed by a snaky guitar run down (from the song “Go Cave!”).  It rocks.  No idea why, but it does.  Even if their own weirdness starts to let the listener stray, Scissorfight do well to always pull you back with a meaty riff or rocking breakdown.  “A charge of assault in the summer/ A punch in the face in the winter/ New Hampshire’s all right if you like fighting,” says Ironlung in “New Hampshire’s all right if you like fighting” (they like to name their songs the chorus).  And to intensify the out there vocals, when they get doubled, it usually becomes a weird chant of shouted rhyme.  If this didn’t actually rock, it would be a lot harder to deal with, but since they hold down some sick ol’ dirty jams between the heady lyrical directions, Scissorfight comes out both original and rocking.

Bushman