Valiant Vinyl - Issue #5

Gruntruck - Above Me 7" (1992)

I had known of Gruntruck’s existence while I was first discovering Skin Yard, but I wasn’t well versed in their material. After I had been listening to Skin Yard for awhile, a friend of mine put in his cassette copy of Inside Yours. When it got to the track “Melt”, and Ben starts hitting the higher notes, it was like a light bulb appeared over my head. I frantically began searching for his case and insert to verify, and sure enough thereit was in black and white. So, even though I had found nearly every Skin Yard release, I now had to search out everything by Gruntruck as well, which is unfortunately not very much.

Gruntruck began as a side project of Ben McMillan’s, but continued on after Skin Yard’s demise. The band also featured Tom Niemeyer of The Accused, Scott McCollum (aka Norman Scott) previously of Skin Yard, and Tim Paul of Napalm Beach and Final Warning. The band was wrapped up in a legal battle with Roadrunner Records in 1993 and probably on into 1996 until they released the Shot EP, something over shenanigans with their contract. I know, it’s a big surprise that Roadrunner would ever do anything to hurt one of their bands… just ask Type O Negative.

This is the 7” single for “Above Me”, from the Push album. On the b-side is a demo version of “Machine Action”, and even though I don’t like it as much as the album version it is a nice little ditty.

Jack Endino produced this, and I think he may have even contributed guitar to both of Gruntruck’s full length albums, but I can’t be sure. I remember Jack mentioning in one of his updates that Ben had recorded close to 100 songs and Jack was trying to convince him to release a solo record. Now that Ben is gone, I hope that someone has the good sense to release at least on album of his best unreleased. Not that I want people profiting from his passing, but I think it would give us fans at least one last chance to hear some new stuff, perhaps some stuff Ben may have been too self conscious to release himself. After all, we are all our own worst critic.

A: Above Me (04:59)
B: Machine Action [16 Track Demo] (05:10)

"Above Me / Machine Action Demo"