REVIEWS!

"Super Yum Surgeon Boy" LP
Bands like this don't come around everyday. Or rather, bands like this usually take a while to develop before coming around. I imagine a half decade or so of learning the ropes, releasing things that go nowhere except as one-off tracks on mix tapes for that girl you met at that local band concert last weekend. Usually the bands get some kind of grassroots following, starting in their town, and they luck into getting featured on a CMJ sampler, and then get name-dropped on an indie zine year-end poll (if only by some fatass guy who likes a bunch of no-name hardcore bands). Fairly soon afterwards, the band releases an EP on a big independent label, and are the talk of free publications everywhere, though still so far underground to the general public as to be relatively non-existent in the greater scheme of things.

Scissor Shock is here, and they are full-grown. Of course, they had their small beginnings in Indiana in the early 00's, but with a demo and some splits and stuff out of the way, here is their -- in my mind -- fully-formed masterpiece. Nevermind the deconstructive "jazz" of their previous album: This is where the real shit is at. There's just no people making these kinds of records anymore. What you have here is a boy who was 17 at the time of this, screaming his lungs out over top of an electronic noise grinding jazz masterpiece. At times operatic and at other times frightening, there's pretty much nothing like this right now.

The great thing I hear in this band is that they don't appear to be playing towards their peers or press. This sounds like a noise band who somehow learned that just playing the old sound, or even updating the old sound for all-important cred points, wasn't really the point. Scissor Shock, on this record a one-piece completely masterminded by Adam Cooley, plays music rather distinct and passionate, and I hope they have as little regard for the formula of making it big as I do.

They'll probably get lumped in with Wolf Eyes or Merzbow or something, but they're way more spastic, yet at the same time opting for surprisingly intricate (sometimes broaching minimalist) ambient keyboard lines and dreary beat disonnance, albeit very aggressive ones. "Techno Slaves Are Fucking Go!", a near-11-minute funeral dirge-turned-techno-jam has a key element of the Scissor Shock sound: ambience. INTENSE ambience. Floating around in speaker to speaker, killing the listener. Scissor Shock, protesting who knows what injustice over angular video game and noise lines seemingly more suited to old school math-rock bands like Slint or Don Caballero. But in noise form! It is jazz. But, the thing is, this isn't some abstract brainfreeze music, but as noise as anything Troubleman Unlimited put out. Of course, they don't really sound like Black Dice or even Erase Errata, but you probably guessed that by now.

The drums overplay like crazy, and the songs are way more intense and speedy than they have any right to be. This is so jarring, so relentelessly fast and staticy... but it's also suprisingly well-produced. There's nothing like it out there, so check it out.

Rating: 9/10.
- Iceripper

Scissor Shock goes far beyond the call of brokecore. While much of the brokecore I’ve heard just sounds like an 8-year old girl screaming over Fruity Loops presets, Scissor Shock can only be described as an extreme electronic mess. Howls and yelps can just be heard over the barage of video game noises, drums, and over-all electronic wash. You gotta have your coffee to keep up! Each little composition on this record has about a million time changes and rarely lets up. Its kind of like super-annoying computer thrash, and that’s not a bad thing.
- Dan, http://www.tinyzine.com

"Calcium is Dead" Single
Scissor Shock is without a doubt one of the most demential bands of our times. Nothing of which they do, absolutely, offers the minimum concession. In this ` Calcium Is Dead' they put, literally, to run a series of instrumental recordings to discharge - too high speed to the time that put in short random sounds, infantile shouts and voices in a frenetic race in circles. Equivalent the sonorous one to acid, this is cdr twisted, of joking spirit, amused, seemed at some moments to the one of some of the rolas more socarronas of... and the Native Hipsters. Something is clear of this cdr, these six minutes do not go to you to make feel better, nor to ponerte to think, but it goes that they are going to be sountrack perfect for repressed your the more and deliriously dark infantile memories. The edition is totally huge. The band gives this 3"cdr in retorts to miniature of folders color Manila, each one illustrated by children with crayones and plumones. A gallant joyita.
- http://ruidohorrible.blogspot.com/ [ sorry altavista fucks things up so badly; this site is excellent and worth reading despite bablefish's broken english ]

"How to Make a Scream Queen Cream" LP
Scissor Shock is a schizophrenic sonorous project that combines experimentalismo elements, noise, acid rock and until garage rock with tape manipulation and found recordings. Very in the style of some of sonorous the moments more dedicated to collages of Nurse With Wound, Scissor Shock offers music that is neither pedantic nor artsy-fartsy, but campy, inexpressive and, mainly, openly absolutely devoid of sentimentalities. Through all this dense mist of sonorous inconsistency and debris there are nevertheless also some extremely persistent elements, as they are without a doubt a good dose of sense of humor and one loads enormous of valemadrismo. And this does not mean that ` How to Make to Scream Queen Cream' does not have its moments of beauty. Like in the works of other wage-earners of the nightmares, like Irr. App. (Ext.), in this cdr there are sufficient full moments of sonorous conjugaci�n like leaving in clear that these cuates know the rules well their own game of shock and anti-formal terror. Totally acid.
- http://ruidohorrible.blogspot.com/ [ sorry altavista fucks things up so badly; this site is excellent and worth reading despite bablefish's broken english ]

"We're in the Trash Bag" EP
The Midwest's own Scissor Shock is the sonic equivalent to a heart attack. Mutilated tape loops are melted down and reconstructed only to be forced into your 4th grade boom box. You know the one. The very first boom box you had, the one where you could still play the tape if you had the fast forward button held down. Well, that's what Scissor Shock sounds like. It sounds as though they porously got the fast forward button to get stuck down, and then they ripped that fucking button off the machine so there is no hope of fixing it. It's fast, it's intense, and then ten minutes later you are left in silence, clutching at your chest� yep, sounds like a heart attack to me.
- http://www.indieworkshop.com

The shortest release here is by Scissor Shock, who are listed as a five piece group on the cover (keyboards, drum computers, guitar, vocals etc.), but the eight short tracks, which last in total 10 minutes, were all 'produced, written, whatever' by Adam Cooley in 2005, with a computer microphone and mixed in cool edit pro. Total mayhem here of collaged together sounds of rock-noise like group playing, but also the speeding up of cassettes. Cut together in a highly fast and energetic way. A nice release, even at this length (or perhaps because of this length?).
- http://www.vitalweekly.net

Short but severe, these madmen burn through eight tracks of cut-up, fucked-up antimusic in just over ten minutes. Adam Cooley (programming, samples, guitars, keyboards, and efx) and four other sonic terrorists (Sean Edwards, Corey Monster, Brandon Seely, and Kyle Willey) shovel on tape gibberish, devolved beats, crazed bursts of noise, video game effects, shouting, and other hysterically out-of-control madness. You can't even tell where one song ends and another begins; it's just ten minutes or so of what sounds like angry mutant bumblebees growing to the size of your average Pittsburgh Steeler and rampaging through a recording studio, turning things on and off at random, playing too many things at once, and occasionally getting all chilly 'n ambient just long enough to disarm you before trying to stuff 137 different sounds down your ear canal at once. Perverse, disturbed, and highly amusing. Best titles: "after i die, speed noise will live forever" and "seriously, this is the last time i'm going to do this." Your cerebral cortex will never be the same. Limited to 250 copies.
- One True Dead Angel, http://www.monotremata.com/dead/da05/music_reviews.html

"The Mars Travolta"
From the desolated town of Columbus, Indiana comes a record that pretends to strip all the instruments, notes and arrangements while leaving the bare essentials to the sounds of shoegaze, odd timed punk and noise, with disc scratches becomimg such a fundamental part of the songs as the sounds found within it. Like a computer that's willing to kill all humans decoding and recombining mp3s; and, with a title as hilarious as that, What else can you ask for?
- Switch Magazine Mexico by Marcos Hassan

Despite the parodistic title, ‘The Mars Travolta’ by Scissor Shock, aka Adam Cooley, doesn’t fall too far from the iconic namesake, exploring technological wonder with proggish aplomb. With junior power electronics and a healthy pool of guitar, vocal, and keyboard sounds, Cooley creates surprisingly beaty tracks, more often danceable than not, sounding like equal parts John Wiese, Mae Shi, and YACHT (or whoever yr favorite laptop artist is). Additional contributions come from friends on guitar, trombone, and sax, though in the melee, it’s anything goes. A wide, whole notes of synth and pockets of glitchy beats open the first couple tracks “Your chemistry theories are a waste of fucking time” and another which I cannot read (the sharply designed liner notes are blurred throughout as if dunked in water, but likely just the result of a bad printer). There is more distinction within tracks than between them, and it is very likely that the segue between two has more in common that the start and finish of one. Subdued keyboard track “Bodymelt” is a nice breather early on, a calming hum over manipulated-tape textures, and “She’s Just a Head” is a centrally-located highlight, ideal for its inclusion of all things good about this disc: frantic blasts of tightly sequenced blabber, meted out in even time, between which swells of keyboard and other nuanced effects are allowed to evolve. Go ahead and include following track “Science of Sinus” in this segment, as the tracks are fused together, this second piece made of a clean guitar and several layers of vocals, repeated not-quite maddeningly over a metronome beat. The brief “Extreme Sludge Worship” comes in the final stretch of quiet before the 15 minute monster finale gets right to business with rapid, squishy clippings ala Id M Theft Able or Dave Philips, followed by irregularly-paced programmed percussion and periods of silence, waves of feedback, then more machine-ambient hum, at last capped with the stuttering, warm guitar strum of the last track coda teetering out into digital blank. At 46 minutes, the disc covers a lot of ground without too much unwanted space, but future releases will hopefully refine the sound further to a more unified mess. Yeah. Color-sprayed CDr comes in a plastic clamp case with slip-in color art. Limited to 50 copies.
- animalpsi

Normally my days are much too short to bother with CDs that skip. Let alone CDs that has skips put on intentionally. This album has a lot of skipping, and they're all intentional. Imagine my face when I read this on the handwritten info sheet that came with it. Scissor Shock is operated by Adam Cooley who has made it his mission to record stuff that others wouldn't normally record because, well, it wouldn't make sense. Putting intentional skips on "The Mars Travolta" may seem like just another prank but fortunately the prank isn't as annoying as I thought it would be. The skips almost disappear in the midst of the freaked out glitch/noise rubble that's been smeared out over this album's eleven tracks. Almost unclassifiable, all these tracks seem like little creative pockets in Cooley's mind that spontaneously burst wide open to leave a shitload of impressions to take in. The massive airhorn drone that opens "Your Chemistry Theories Are a Waste of Fucking Time" just functions as a warning sign for things to come. "She's Just Ahead" particularly is stuffed to the gills with bad Aphex Twin beats, glitch terror, moments of misleading space and weird cut up sounds before it evolves into a slowpaced piece ornamented with sparse guitar melodies and moody drones. The subtle "Body Melt" forms a much needed break from all the crazy sonic energy, sounding like an undeveloped Tim Hecker soundscape, oceanic and spacious, it gives you a moment to reflect on past madness. Be sure to take a few deep breaths though because before you know it the stop-start stutterbeats, noisy hiccups and everything inbetween take off again. "The Mars Travolta" dangerously treads on this thin line between hit and miss and although the contrasts it spawns do sometimes make for moments of unexpected beauty, the blunt episodes of epileptic beats deconstruct any sort of climax this album would certainly benefit from.
- Joris Heemskerk, www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/

Here is an unexpectedly enjoyable effort from Scissor Shock of whom this is my first exposure to. This a disc full of spastic experimental music ranging from IDM to noise influences but taking many twists and turns on this wild ride into melodic ambient passages, glitchy Fennesz-like etudes, electroacoustic build-ups, and plenty of all out chaos.

The sound here is digital, but it's well produced and exhibits the good of digital quality (clear, crisp highs, plenty of space and clean reverbs, good use of dynamics and signal processing) and none of the lows (small resonances, weak highs and lows, familiar effects and processing). Each track has it's own unique thing going on, but often Scissor Shock will fall into a semi-rhythmic phrase, usually some sort of loop, that is manipulated and added to until it reaches a point where a new set of sounds will finally erupt and blast forth either changing the track up entirely, or reaching a peak and exploding, only to present another awkward phrase of layered dementia.

It really feels like every possible part of The Mars Travolta is successfully executed and polished which is saying a lot considering how many different styles of sound there is here, but it also makes it a very detailed listening experience. I'm now listening for about the fifth time and I only feel like I'm starting to grasp at some of the different sonic ideas represented here. For instance I never noticed the subtle sounding orchestral influences on the end of track 6 before, that must be synths, but have the illusion of being low horns, morphing into a delayed outro. Track 6 (as far as I can tell these are all untitled) also contains one of my favorite moments of IDM-like competency with it's Sir Duperman influenced stuttering beats and awkward synth melody coupled with some nice distortion.

The following track seems like it would stick out like a sore thumb but somehow the morphing from noise to lo-fi folk works perfectly, the track evolves into subdued experimental ambience until finally we attacked in track 8 with a plethora of pitch shifted and distorted beats, chopped, mutilated, layered and process until they are coming at you from all sides.

The Mars Travolta is a great experimental album and if you think you might enjoy the sounds of Sir Duperman, Jazzkammer, Pleasurehorse, Fennesz, and Infidel/Castro! all thrown into a blender and mashed around, then good luck. I hope you're the adventurous type, because this is going to be a wild ride!
-xdementiax/blood ties webzine, http://existest.org/bloodties/

Scissor Shock is for the most part a one man band comprised of Adam Cooley, who seems to have done a number of other noise or noise related projects in the past, including Suicide Stagedive, and RUINHORSE. Although I get the impression that there maybe more differences between these bands then similarities. Scissor Shock jumps around alot, from glitchy Dat Politics esque electro-cuteness, to weird repetative guitar and vocals and electronics (is that what they call "folktronica"?). Although it also reminds me of bands like Force Field and Neon Hunk, as well as maybe some Gang Wizard/Friends Forever as well... It's all done pretty well, although it's one of those releases that makes me wonder "what was this I put on?" some times, as it changes up so much from track to track. These guys (guy) seem to be pretty active, with a number of splits and other recordings forth coming including a cdr on Crucial Blast, and have a number of previous releases on labels such as XdiedinrouteY and Excite Bike. From Columbus Indiana. Amazing how many people are out there doing their thing where ever they are.
- flagday, http://machetemob.blogspot.com

"Tease the Skeleton
Scissor Shock is a trio of madmen, a unrelenting shock of abuse from the American Mideast, utilizing an experimental style of vocally-oriented Noise and, more pertinently on this release, hardcore in the No-wave sense. Fans of the 2008-era “Free Ringtones!” album from Chicago's Hatewave, and for that matter many of the other Apop Records artists, will find this release appetizing. The project is made up of three insane individuals from the area of my own personal old stomping grounds (Batesville), Columbus, Indiana. Now anyone from that area of the world can only guess as to why a project like this would pop up out there, but when you're surrounded by nothing but cows, corn, and tobacco for miles in any direction, something has to grasp your attention and time other than drugs and getting pregnant in high school. World, if you haven't already since their 2003 birth as a project, say hello to Sean Edwards, Adam Cooley (of one of the more interesting acts in the post-sludge scene, Robe.), and...eh... Booe? The factual genre-definition of Scissor Shock is hard to find. While no-wave is a generally useful phrase to describe the experimental and hardcore-influenced sound on this album, there are many other defining factors to the band that can be seen throughout the rest of their albums. Their presence in the noise world, for instance, is undeniable, and they even hold ties with droners and experimental rockers, as they were found previously in the Public Guilt mail-order before the label decided to close it (which, you should be reminded, will be happening at the end of this month / first week of April.) Scissor Shock somehow has a unique grasp even in a genre as small as no-wave. Their sound doesn't rely solely on the grindier elements found in their counterparts found throughout the genres, but rather has a more electro-sense about the music. The music has a traditional song-based composition, meaning loops and repeats are followed, rather than general confusion and chaotic structures. Many of the experimental textures found on Tease the Skeleton are largely either vocal-based or melody-based. The guitar and other melodic instruments follow no classically-defined pattern, rather floating into disharmonies with one another, always creating a feeling of uneasiness. Ironically, as unusual as the music sounds, and as promising as it may be, when the vocals come in, any South Park fan will immediately have the thought of Cartman in their mind, as it truthfully sounds as if the character has broken out of the TV and started his own pissed off and confused hardcore project. Brass horns, accordian and all. And for any Cincinnati-dweller, the band sounds strongly like the early days of Realicide, prior to the hardcore techno and the drum machine intelligence. All in all, whether you want to purchase this release depends on your love for the genre. There's not a ton of people out there today following no-wave, so anyone into this music is obviously doing it for the fun and the love. If that speaks to you, then seek this one out. - http://www.heathenharvest.com/article.php?story=20090321155434181

This is the lastest EP soon be released on dollfullofrivets. If your familiar with Adam Cooley and Scissor Shock you'll know it's not your average sytle of noise. There's a lot of going on's in this release and here's a short mention of the typs of sounds: Skipping CD sounds, vocal screaming, odd guitar playing, weird ass drums, Mario Brothers jumping for a coin?, buzzing, saxophone, lots of various samples, etc. This is free-rock-noise for sure. No structure and just plain fun! "Melting The Sun" is probably my favorite track on here as it's a total Free-jazz type track, in an odd way. I kinda wish the whole disc sounded like this track as it seemed to be the one with the most purpose. "Dissolved Stomach Calculations" is fairly insteresting as well. Great acid type sound using guitar tapping mixed with some decent drums. Overall this disc is a decent listen and something new for sure. If your a fan of Hobby Knife then you'll like this one. Lots of fun and a ton of sounds!
- Damno Te, http://noisear.blogspot.com

The unclassifiable glitch-noise band from Columbus returns with a new EP of damaged sounds and anti-tunes, eight slices of perverted riffs, exotic sounds, obtuse structures, and weird noises all configured into random-sounding tracks of... well... randomness. “Random” is probably the operative word with this band; despite their noise tag, their individual albums sound surprisingly different, and they are less about blowing up your ears than figuring out new and quixotic ways to scrunch together sounds that have no business coexisting in the same audio space. Revolving around Adam Cooley (the only full-time member), their approach to randomness is nowhere near as random as you might suspect -- there’s definitely a thoughtful kind of madness behind the construction of these audio blips -- but their approach is sufficiently arcane to make it nearly impossible to guess what will happen next, no matter what they’re doing at any given moment. The only real constant is that everything tends to sound like a damaged cd, one warped by heat or some other accident in such a fashion that everything is speeded up and skipping; this is the sound of enormous amounts of information being force-fed into intensely short increments of time. Contrary to some of their earlier releases, there’s very little harsh noise on this one, but instead many, many, many snippets of what were probably ordinary, entirely recognizable sounds before Cooley and co. started whittling them down and tying them together in bizarre musical strings. There are lots of frantic, broken beats and peculiar pinging sounds amid the sonic wreckage, along with what might be actual guitar riffs here and there or just samples from bargain-bin records. Any way you slice it, the EP is a strange listening experience, to be sure. Good, interesting, and heavy on the damaged-sound tip... but strange. Very strange.
- http://theonetruedeadangel.blogspot.com/

This is a crazy recording. I don't know what it is 1/2 of the time. There is guitar oriented spazzmodic music which gets near grind, but there is also a lot of noise, freeform, jazzy ambient, atari-core, and whatever can be dug out of this musical mutilation and deconstruction. It has roots in some form of extreme rock/punk/metal oriented stuff, but it is done in an almost cartoonish nonsense - "whole toybox full of sounds and instruments," sort of way. It has a very basement kind of vibe, like a group of over exuberant youth piled in the lower level bedroom just recording the hell out of any noise that they can make in a fun-cut up- do whatever you want kinda thing. I'm guessing that at least part of what i am hearing is freeform improvisation. I think that I hear the school band instruments in there! It has a very dramatic feel, going from silence to huge amounts of screamy ranting in seconds flat. The whole thing has an odd sort of progression to it, including unpredictable rhythms and rapidly flipping tempos. It is a beautiful mess. Listening to Scissor Shock is like violently blacking in and out of a super heavily speedy acid trip in a pre-school play room.
- http://www.myspace.com/neozine

SYNONYM FOR THE WORD DECAY
‘Synonym’ arrives as a pen scribbled CDR wrapped around a sheet of A4 on which there are scribbled the 12 track titles. Senses become aroused at the sight of track 2 ‘Naked Brunch’ last track is called ‘Johnny Merzbow is Dead’. I visit their myspace page for further info and find that their influences list is 500 bands long and matches exactly their sounds like list. The singer looks like a foppish Mark E Smith, the guitarist wears a cape made out of paper on which is written Scissor Shock. I am listening and experiencing what sounds like The Shaggs after Derek Bailey joined em. Maybe Jaco Pastorious joined in somewhere too only he’s had his thumbs cut off and he’s playing the bass with his teeth. Theirs a horn blower but I think his lungs have collapsed and the singer sounds like a five year old asking for more pocket money in whiny voice. Most tracks sound like a speeded up Stump and are probably not the kind of thing you’d want playing at your funeral unless you are really and truly of the strange variety. But by then I was smitten. Scissor Shock will go far. Maybe to the end of road and back. But what a trip. - http://web.mac.com/idwalfisher/Idwal_Fisher/Reviews/Entries/2009/1/9_SCISSOR_SHOCK.html

What is Scissor Shock? After long consideration, I still have no idea. There is no information about the bend beside a single Geocities (really?) page and their Last.FM profile. What I do know however is that their 2007 release, Synonym For The Word Decay, is a No Wave/Noise/Jazz LP that, as the band so succinctly puts it, "is like a heart attack". - musicsemicolon.blogspot.com/2008/11/scissor-shock-synonym-for-word-decay.html

not harsh noise, but just as off. 12 tracks of cohesively meandering goo ga in the vein of the band-but-not-a-band sound employed by groups orbiting the outer rings of what might constitute noise rock. artsy, yes. weird, check. - http://thestaticfanatic.blogspot.com/2008/12/scissor-shock-synonym-for-word-decay.html

Scissor Shock is an interesting mix. It's mainly a one-man project (Adam Cooley is the man responsible) which on the one hand sounds almost like a laptop band. The drums sound synthetic and programmed, the vocals are usually effected, and there's some digital fuckery throughout. However, the playing style is closest to loose-knit multi-member ensembles who specialize in semi-improvised chaotic rock. Think of a digital version of Fat Worm of Error, or a Caroliner from the future instead of the past. It's not quite as tightly choreographed as U.S.Maple (I think!) but each song definitely has a plan. Scissor Shock is really prolific and this full-length release follows right behind an equally full-length release which seems like it came out less than 6 months ago. From what I gather, Scissor Shock started out doing something more like the usual kid-with-a-laptop style of grindcore/8-bit. I'm glad that the project has evolved into this more challenging and interesting style. The arrhythmic beats are accompanied by some equally off-balance guitar manglings, trombone, miscellaneous, and some Wicked Witch of the West vocals. There are also a couple of tracks to break things up with only some acoustic guitar noodling, which actually sounds quite skilled and even pretty. These tracks are called "Ghost Fahey" and "Fahey Ghost" and while I'm not really familiar with John Fahey's music, I'm guessing these tracks are some kind of homage. (maybe also an homage to the band Ghost?) I really respect that actually. If you're going to try to play like a favorite artist, just call it like it is, don't try to pass it off as your own invention. In the same vein, this album also includes a track titled "Blood Infinitive" and yeah, there's definitely a link between this and Royal Trux's "Twin Infinitives" too. Strangely, while being far more honest about who he's stealing from, Scissor Shock has also created music that is far more unique than most other bands. P.S. Adam is also very generous about giving his music away online. Poke around a little bit and you can find plenty of Scissor Shock for free download, but you'll want to buy an album too! "Synonym for the Word Decay" is to be released September 26th on Laser Seizure Records. http://www.geocities.com/scissor_shock/ http://www.myspace.com/scissorshock

-MP LOCKWOOD, http://no-core.blogspot.com/2008/

synonym for the word decay cd-r [2008, laser seizure]
columbus, indiana's scissor shock consists of two people who are/were also involved in the droney robe., but outside of sharing some personnel, those groups have nothing in common. hell, most of scissor shock's albums don't even have anything in common with each other. what began back in 2003 as a digital grind/noise solo project by adam cooley has mutated... and mutated.. and mutated.. and will probably continue to do so until adam gives up. as of 2007, trombonist/double bass player aaron booe has joined in on the action. for the most part, i try to avoid making musical comparisons on this site. it's too easy (and lazy), and most of the time whenever anyone else does it, they just end up pissing me off, but once i got to the fourth track on synonym, it hit me: dude, this sounds like john zorn and arab on radar gang-raping the spirit of jazz. too opaque? well, listen to the uploaded track and maybe you'll be on the level. breaking the twelve tracks down and analyzing them wouldn't seem to make that much sense, since, they pretty much adhere to one or two particular styles (and can bleed together if you're not paying close enough attention), so once you have a good grasp of where exactly they're coming from, you'll know what you're in for. one of the most striking aspects is the tinny, angular, whining guitar, which is played relentlessly and spastically, and with deft precision when it comes to avoiding rhythm. the other major factor is the programmed beats, which seem more than a little punch-drunk; trying to follow along by bobbing your head is a surefire way of being mistaken for an epileptic. i don't think that there's one congruent moment shared between the guitar and (synthetic) drums, which would seemingly set the stage for all hell to break lose, but this disc is about controlled chaos. surprisingly, despite the different aspects of scissor shock's music fighting each other, there's no real freak-outs, even when a song unexpectedly shifts into a trombone, cowbell and xylophone breakdown. cooley's vocals, not present on every track, are another interesting dynamic. they're mixed a little low, compared to everything else, making it heard to pick up on coherent lyrics (or stream of consciousness shouts and ranting), but they sound fitting, especially when his nasally musings are paired with the more frantic and desperate instrumental moments. synonym for the word decay is clearly not going to appeal to everybody. i'd call these anti-songs; there's no rhythm, no melody (well, barring the combined two hundred and forty seconds of sore thumbs fahey ghost and ghost fahey), but if you like to listen to something that resembles music, but sounds like it could fall apart at any time, this might appeal to you. there's definitely things going on here that i dig: the maniacal nature of the guitar (as well as its tone and seeming elasticity), the nod given to jazz inspired breaks and the more delicate sounds of bells, xylophone and slower trombone passages which are pleasantly scattered throughout the album. i do think that scissor shock would benefit by forgoing the drum machine completely, but where would they find a blind drummer with no sense of rhythm (but impeccable stamina)? - http://smoothassailing.blogspot.com/2009/01/scissor-shock.html

Scissor Shock -- SYNONYM FOR THE WORD DECAY [Lazer Seizure Records] I have no idea what "genre" the band belongs in (there's a big debate on the subject in progress on their Myspace page, if you care about these things), but one thing's for sure -- they're definitely products of the ADD generation. This twelve-track EP is approximately thirty minutes long, and no motif in the constantly-shifting cornucopia of sound ever hangs around for more than a few seconds. Everything I've heard from them so far sounds pretty much like a cd being played on fast-forward, and this is no exception, although there are a couple of unexpected deviations from the hopalong splattersound like "fahey ghost," an obvious tribute to the cranky (and dead) guitar god that's my favorite track, if only because I'm a Fahey fanatic. (There's also a sequel, "ghost fahey," that's almost certainly the same track played in reverse.) Elements of just about every form of music you can imagine -- but mainly jazz, electronica, and the more disquieting edge of ambient -- show up in the songs here, usually in short bursts and juxtaposed in bizarre fashion. They're definitely one of the more listenable bands in this frantic cut 'n paste audio electroshock arena, and their "what the fuck?" mission of pure sonic chaos is helped considerably by swell song titles like "psychic vision of a strangulated woman who is missing her shoe" and "johnny merzbow is dead." If you've heard their previous work (of which there is seriously a lot -- the band is nothing if not excessively prolific) and liked it, you'll like this one too; if you haven't, well, this is a good a place to start as any.- http://theonetruedeadangel.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

Mossy Throats / Scissor Shock Split
MOSSY THROATS / SCISSOR SHOCK Split (JK Tapes)