Scalple – Skillful Butchers

Skillful Butchers is the new album from New York City’s Scalple, their first for Sorry State. Since Scalple’s 2018 12” on Roach Leg Records, they’ve expanded to a five-piece and changed their sound, moving toward the thrash-and-mosh dynamics of late 80s UK hardcore bands like Heresy, Ripcord, and Concrete Sox. Those bands took their inspiration from early 80s US hardcore, and just as the sound changed when those bands carried it across the pond, Scalple infuses this style with the filth, grime, and frustration they soak up walking New York City’s streets. More than just a well-timed throwback, Skillful Butchers ups their inspirations’ ante in terms of intensity and precision, and adds new wrinkles like the blistering metallic lead guitars and the crunching industrial interludes courtesy Maggot Champagne, aka Pharmakon. However you categorize it, Skillful Butchers is a great hardcore record, packed with memorable songs and riffs destined to get the pit moving as the world remembers how to mosh.