Scratch Acid Reunion Tour Comes to Emo's East [Show Preview]

Scratch Acid//photo by Dixon

Scratch Acid w/ When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Saturday, December 10
Emo\'s East (2015 East Riverside Dr.)
$20-23, show at 9pm
[info] | [tickets]

When it was announced in May that Scratch Acid, the legendarily raucous, influential and short-lived punk/hardcore foursome formed in Austin in 1981, would be reuniting for the Jeff Mangum-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, U.K., bassist David Wm. Sims also dropped the news that the band would play dates in the U.S. as well. It wasn't a stretch to assume that one of those dates would be in Scratch Acid's old hometown, where, over the course of five years, two EPs and one LP, the band managed to detonate the received punk-rock wisdom of the day. Scratch Acid rejected the thrash of West Coast punk and conventional hardcore qualities in favor of their own out-of-left-field mash-up of influences and eccentricities, encompassing Motörhead, Led Zeppelin, Public Image Ltd. and their friends the Butthole Surfers, all delivered by Rey Washam's thunderous drumming, David Yow's maniacal vocals and sludgy, heavy-hitting guitar riffs from Brett Bradford. The resulting sound is sharp-edged, arty noise, simultaneously bewildering and hair-raising.

Though elements of their sound would influence the post-hardcore movement, Scratch Acid perhaps fit in more squarely with (or were rather more like precursors to) the aesthetic cabal that music journalist Robert Christgau derisively termed "pigfuck" when describing an early Sonic Youth record - salacious, chaotic and gritty punk music blasted at elevated decibel levels and with elevated middle fingers. Think Big Black, the Buttholes and Yow and Sims's later band, The Jesus Lizard. Scratch Acid's first two albums, a self-titled EP and their only full-length, Just Keep Eating, were released by a local indie label called Rabid Cat and remain essential Texas punk recordings. It's not difficult to hear their influence on a number of Austin bands, from ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead to the cadre of gutter-punk groups that rock Red River every weekend.

Scratch Acid broke up in 1987, and - now that ATP has been rescheduled for March - their show at Emo's East on Saturday will be their first together since then since 2006 [Ed's note: thanks to Cory for the correction]. It should be a pretty big deal, and tickets are still available. Locals When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth will open. Their latest album Peaced is available as a free download, and we've been told that Craig Clouse from Shit and Shine will be joining them for this performance.

Scratch Acid: [touch and go]
When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth: [bandcamp]