4 out of 5

Label: Wonderdrug Records

Producer: Ken Cmar

Woot, S-Fight.  Well, if you own American Cloven Hoof Blues, I’m gonna be all sacrilege and say that you own some superior versions of these tracks.  But don’t let that mislead you – if you’d stumbled across this mess of fried sludge with the horrible pixelated cover in a shop and decided to give it a shot because, hey, Supervirgin vs. Death Machine and other great song names, OR perhaps you were totally kicked in the teeth at a live show and had no choice but to knock motherfucks down to pick this up from the merch table, you were in for a recorded treat.  This is a less polished Scissorfight, and I must say that they are a band who have grown thanks to that polish, but they still had tight riffs, thumping bass lines matched with kicking drums, and Ironlung’s growl rumbling through your speakers.  Interestingly, though, less is more with SF, as Ironlung perhaps hadn’t grown comfortable with his lower-range vocals and so either drops into a less energetic growl or producer Ken Cmar (also owner of WDrug Records) adds a layer of distortion over things to scuff it up, and it just doesn’t click in quite the same way as just letting the man speak.  So the slower tracks on Guaranteed Kill don’t match the intensity or sharpness of their similarly paced brethren on later albums (or the re-takes on Cloven Hoof Blues), but the faster paced jams are already at full blast.

There’s also some interesting studio tricks that the band would drop later on – some L-R panning and some sound effects – that push the songs toward a less country-rock feel, so it’s a fascinating look into what might’ve been… but also a good comparison point for how they’ve honed their sound.  All this being blabbed, besides the tracks that aren’t on Cloven Hoof, this is still a must-own for Scissorfight fans, as the originals are far enough removed from the years later redos that they are definitely different songs.  And while they might not rock quite as cleanly, they still rock, of course.