Shatterbox

***RARE AND RAW SEATTLE PUNK ROCK'N'ROLL FROM '81!!! DIG! Records Archeological Division presents Strung Out on the Line, the all but lost private press powerhouse LP from SHATTERBOX. The band formed in 1979, at a major and sketchy (read: majorly sketchy) generational crossroads for what threatened to be the last gasp of Rock’n’roll in the ‘70s, and the shaky-new directions it’d take in the ‘80s. Recorded in their Seattle basement, the band utilized a mobile studio unit a la a low-rent D.I.Y. Exile Main on St., and self-released the album on New Year’s Day 1981 in an unknown quantity, and in an array of handmade album art designs: stencil and spray paint; paste-on Xerox cutout; and bare-white factory sleeves, Shatterbox never followed standard operating procedures and Strung Out on the Line captures the band’s wild and ragged original sound and style in full. Newly restored and remastered by DAVID ECK from the original quarter-inch reels and housed in properly printed jackets with liner notes displaying the numerous versions of album art and an oral history from the band’s sole surviving member, Richard Pleasant, this LP is finally receiving the presentation it deserves. Rocketing through twelve brash and energetic cuts of exuberant Punk Rock and raw Power Pop, the album sonically falls somewhere between The Heartbreakers, Nervous Eaters and either—or, better yet—both iterations of The Gizmos.