Monday, March 17, 2025

Fistfull


 
ORIGINS: Hornsby, NSW
GENRE: Hardcore
YEARS ACTIVE: 1997-2000
 
MEMBERS:
RELEASES: 
 
  • (Don't) Do the Locomotion (1999) - Split with Nintendo Police - Download Here
    • 1. Swollen
    • 2. Fistfool
    • 3. Eyes in the Bushes
    • 4. Fulfillment
    • 5. Never Good Enough
    • 6. Mr Miyagi
    • 7. We'll Make the Difference (Insted cover)
    • 8. You're the Best / Pay to Cum (Bad Brains cover)

  • Violent Hornsby Straightedge (2000) [Compilation]
    • 1. Menuni
    • 2. Have a Good One
    • 3. Mr Miyagi


  • Self-Titled (2000) - Split with Gorebash
    • 1. Swollen
    • 2. Settle the Score
    • 3. From the Neck Down
    • 4. No Escape
    • 5. Change in Fortune
    • 6. Know Your Faults
    • 7. Fulfilment
    • 8. Clenched Fists, Black Eyes 
SUMMARY: Starting as part of the late '90s wave of Hornsby hardcore bands, Fistfull play exactly eight shows in Hornsby, Newcastle, and Sydney before members moved on to other more well-known hardcore projects. The band was also well known for their obsession with the film The Karate Kid.
 
SHOWS: 
ORAL HISTORY:
SHORTTY: The first punk/hardcore I ever heard was on the skate video Whiskey. It had Black Flag's 'Six Pack', Dag Nasty's 'Values Here', the bands SNFU, Pegboy, and some other shit. When I heard it I was just like, "Fuck, this is mad!" and I quickly put a tape recorded up to the TV and pressed play/record. Soon after I fully got into Bad Religion and some other melodic punk. I started going to shows at the local youth centre, the Fitz Cafe, in 1995 and was seeing bands like Nancy Vandal, Gilgamesh, Lawnsmell, Stalin's Organ, and Toe to Toe. Toe to Toe were the first band to really get me into the more hardcore side of things.
Chris Shortt (Vocals), Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999
 
LUKE: It was my first kind of serious band... I used to jam with some buddies before I moved to Australia but we were young and dumb and thought Nirvana and Green Day covers would take us to the top, haha. I did also spend some time playing with my buddy's punk band - they were much better musicians than I was and I couldn't keep up. Hanging out with them got me started into punk rock. 
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
RINNAZ: Fistfull started in the Summer of 1997/98. Me and our drummer Luke 'Davo' Davidson had jammed a few times and our high school buddy Chris 'Shortty' Shortt joined on vocals. We then added Shervin Emami on bass.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
Photo by Karen Tran
SHERVIN: The four of us went to high school together and created Fistfull, our first band, around '97 or '98 when we were 17. Ari and Shortty were already part of the local straightedge scene. 
Shevin Emami (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024
 
LUKE: I was a year below Ari, Shortty, and Sherv at high school. I overheard Ari and Shortty talking about punk rock one day on the bus and they were talking about No Use For a Name - I told them that I just saw them play with Lagwagon right before I moved to Australia. Then we kind of started hanging out and listening to music. I had a guitar and an amp, a drum set, and a mic with an amp at my house. Ari had a couple songs he had written and one day we just had a jam, and it all started from there. None of us really had much of an idea on how to play, but we would just go hard and play as fast as we could. Shortty started writing lyrics, and the songs all came together pretty organically. That little sweaty jam room spawned and inspired us to produce some pretty good bands and music, honestly. Fistfull was definitely the foundation for that.
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
SHORTTY: The Karate Kid is a masterpiece! It's one of those childhood movies that never loses its appeal. The first Karate Kid is one of the most inspirational things I've ever seen. Words can't describe how much the legacy of The Karate Kid has influenced Fistfull.
Chris Shortt (Vocals), Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999
 
RINNAZ: At the time, since we wanted to be a hardcore band, I thought the name should be tough so I thought of 'Fistfull' and the others agreed on it. We were so young at the time and only knew a few hardcore records so it's a pretty dumb name, really. I think I thought of the name... maybe Shortty did, I can't remember.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
Photo by Mick, featured in Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999
 
LUKE: Our first show was probably with Nintendo Police and Meataxe, or S. Van, with probably a decent band headlining... I can't remember the name, they were from Newcastle, and very talented...
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
RINNAZ: Our first show was at the Hornsby PCYC but I don't remember the other bands playing on the gig, except for Conation. I remember me and Shortty were shitting our pants before it and my hands were shaking the whole time - I could barely play the guitar. I was 17. Meanwhile, Davo was fine because he had been in a ska punk band in the U.S. back when he was 14 or something.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
SHORTTY: Being involved in underground hardcore punk is so satisfying because you get to voice your opinion and take control of what you do and at the same time not conform to the mainstream. For me the band is also an outlet to release frustrations about my experiences and life in general. Playing in Fistfull allows us to retain our youth (at least mentally). Playing in the band lets us still act like kids and you can probably see that when we play live.  
Chris Shortt (Vocals), Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999


LUKE: We ran through quite a few bass players. We had Ari Mattes for quite some time. He was clutch 'cause he was a cool dude to chill with, knew the scene, and was able to help us play shows. Then we had another dude while we waited for Sherv to figure out how to play bass, which really didn't take him very long. We also had some dude from the Northern Beaches who kind of sucked. Then we settled on Sherv as he was one of the OG gutless crew from high school.
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

SHERVIN: The others kicked me out of the band when they found another Ari, since I was a computer geek that was shit at bass and also very shy.
Shevin Emami (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

RINNAZ: Our lineup first changed when we ditched Sherv on bass, basically because Ari-With-Anger was a cool guy in the scene. We were like, "Cool - the singer of Bleeding Face wants to play in our band". I rationalised it to be fine by saying to myself, "It's okay, Sherv won't care." He was still listening to NOFX and Bad Religion; he didn't fit the image of the band - we wanted to be a hardcore band and eventually me and Shortty even converted to straightedge. Thinking back, it was a dog move to ditch Sherv but this was how my 17-year-old brain thought at the time. Ditching bassists or being ditched by bassists became a recurring theme across the tenure of the band. Ari-With-Anger only played one gig with us and then left. We lost our little gimmick of having two Aris in the band. People had called us 'Ari Ario hardcore' because One Life Crew was in at the time.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

LUKE: I had a shitty boombox with a mic that had a 1/8" input, and we would record our jams through it. This material was used for a split tape with Nintendo Police. We later went to little studio to record the Fistfull / Gorebash split. Some of those songs also went onto the Violent Hornsby Straight Edge comp. We also had a third set of recordings where we rigged up a VCR to record onto a VHS tape for better quality than the boombox but we weren't able to figure out how to get the VHS songs onto a cassette.
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

Photo by Karen Tran

RINNAZ: When Ari-With-Anger left he suggested to us that we add some friend of Love Locklock (Bleeding Face bassist) on bass. So this a kid from the Northern Beaches called 'Jim Dog' started playing bass for us for a bit. It was probably a few months. Jim Dog lived pretty far away and Shortty would drive down to the Northern Beaches in his mum's Daihatsu Charade to pick him up, drive back to St Ives to Davo's mum's house, and then drop Jim Dog back home each week after rehearsal, which would take ages. I would go along for the ride and preach to Shortty about how they should make alcohol illegal in Australia... Jim Dog was still in high school and only knew pop punk but the kid could play. We landed a Resist gig at the Iron Duke and we were so stoked. This was going to be Jim Dog's first gig with Fistfull but Jim Dog didn't show up. We played the gig as a three piece and covered 'Fed Up' by Judge. We never spoke to or heard of Jim Dog again after that.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

RINNAZ: Our friend Eli Partridge (who went on to be the vocalist of Stockholm Syndrome) jammed with us on bass for a bit, however, he did not join the band. After this, we added Dave Seet (Nintendo Police) on bass and he ushered in what I would consider the best era of Fisfull. With Dave on bass we recorded our demo, which was a rehearsal tape, and we released it as a split tape with Nintendo Police. It had our best songs on it plus a couple of dumb tracks like 'Eyes in the Bushes', which was an attempt at horror punk, and 'Mr Miyagi', which we had played live a couple of times already. With this lineup, we also played a gig at the Black Box during the Golden Age of Newcastle hardcore, which was pretty awesome. So were so stoked at the time and covered 'Pay to Cum' by Bad Brains.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

SHORTTY: The best show we played was our second time playing at Lane Cove, with Standard, NFY, etc. It was the most enjoyable because seemed to really get into us that night.
Chris Shortt (Vocals), Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999

Photo by Mick, Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999

LUKE: Rinnaz and I were working on Gorebash around the same time 'cause we wanted to do something a bit more evil and metal. Our interests were moving further away from the youth crew hardcore style. Fistfull dissolved more formally due to Shortty not wanting to do it anymore as he was starting Headless Horsemen. Ari and I were starting Worse Off, and I was going to university in Chicago.
Luke 'Davo' Davidson (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

RINNAZ: The band sort of broke up because we were moving away from the Youth Crew style of music and more towards powerviolence and grindcore influences. Me and Davo had also started a side project called 'Gorebash', which was the two of us doing extreme music. And then Jay Snapshot asked for Fistfull to be on the Violent Hornsby Straight Edge comp so we reformed and recorded a few of our tracks. For this lineup we ditched Dave Seet and added Sherv back to the lineup because we hung out with Sherv all the time and he lived just down the road. I didn't think Dave would care too much but apparently he was a bit cut so it was another dick move on my behalf. The song 'Have a Good One' was written for the compilation and 'Menuni' was a Gorebash track that we converted to Fistfull (so we would have another new track). At the time the band Charles Bronson was in and we were also going back to our melodic roots so our sound changed to a mix of powerviolence and pop punk.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
SHERVIN: I rejoined the band about a year after I'd been kicked out. By that stage I'd gotten more into punk music. Fistfull was quite a serious band but Shortty didn't like being the frontman. Ari was very keen so we created a new grindcore band called Gorebash with Ari singing.
Shevin Emami (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024
 
SHORTTY: The central reason for deciding to break up the band was a lack of interest in what we were doing. Ari really wants to try something new. That's why he's always keen to start new bands. It was fun while it lasted. I don't think we ever planned to stay around long-term anyway.
Chris Shortt (Vocals), Counter Attack Issue 4, 1999
 
RINNAZ: After the Violent Hornsby Straight Edge comp we played one gig at the Hornsby PCYC with the original lineup and this would be our last gig. Davo moved away to the USA so Fistfull looked like it was over. Me and Shortty wanted to continue in a raw hardcore punk direction and tried out our friend Aaron on drums. Shortty wanted his girlfriend Karen from Staying at Home to play in the band. I was like, "Fuck man, I can't ditch Sherv again" but Shortty was adamant about it and said he wouldn't do it unless Karen was in the band. This lineup didn't continue past one jam so I didn't really have to ditch anyone and that was the end of Fistfull.
Ari Rintala (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

AARON: I jammed with Fistfull at least once, maybe twice, but I didn't make the grade. I remember Ari asking me to play a Boston beat and I didn't know what he meant, haha. I killed the band by sucking at drums!
Aaron Clarke (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

RELATED BANDS: Gorebash, Cheapshot, Worse Off, Nintendo Police, Arkanoid, The Trashtones, Quietus, Carpal Tunnels, Three Found Dead, King Kong, Brand Loyalty, Baltic, Badlands, Burning Servant, Zen Demon, Bleeding Face, Deathcage, Camperdown & Out, Nasho, Mekong Delta, S. Van, Headless Horsemen, Coward, Angry Young Americans, The Solo Project, Poster Boys, Hillbilly Horshit Hour, Matt Spinks Band, Staying at Home, Rocketboy, Charcoal Human, Pure Evil Trio, The Spitz, Things Fall Apart, Suicidal Rap Orgy, Masstrauma, Grimm Tongue, Turds of Prey, Hee Haw, Occult Blood, Ether Rag, It's Science, Thorax, Bone Turd, No Doz, Bad Scene, TBX
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