feature: more than scraps – spotlight on 90’s hardcore legends scrap iron scientists #soundcheck

10 years earlier, and they’d have been legends. 10 years later and there’d be proper digital releases out there, but Scrap Iron Scientists’ 90’s run left just a handful of live cuts, a 3 song mostly live EP, some rapturous zine clippings, and a steadily growing myth by word of mouth. But those scraps that exist are damn impressive. The London hardcore quartet’s song touched on race, the justice system, poverty, and alienation. With a ferocity barely seen in the 90’s hardcore scene, the band, fronted by Richard Bodkin Martin’s trademark song “Dreadlock Criminal” opens with the defiant line “oh yes I’m a dreadlock / But I’m no criminal.”

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

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Guitarist Steve Wellington’s chugging riffs come out of the SST school of hardcore. Minimal and heavy, his lean guitar work is free of any proggy excesses. On “Who Killed Justice” the band ups the tempo, while Martin nods to the NWOBHM. The band shifts tempos and feels in a heartbeat, jumping from fragmentary breakdowns to breakneck jams. If Martin’s vocals are often surprisingly melodic, on “Asylum,” he goes full on shout on a track that occupies that space where the definition of alt-metal and hardcore becomes incomprehensibly blurry.

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Scrap Iron Scientists’ live EP was reissued in 2009 by Havavision Records, but the band hasn’t played out since 1997. But the live clips capture a quartet of should-be hardcore legends in their prime. Check them out, and spread the word.

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