"This Is The End Of Hardcore. We Started It And We're Ending It Here Today" - Springa of SS Decontrol at a Jerry's Kids show in 1984. It might be a bold statement, but to a large extend he was right - at least in the case of Boston Hardcore. Little remained of the original scene as bands such as SS Decontrol, DYS, Gang Green and The FU's had either disbanded, or gone Metal [a sound that didn't appeal to many within the Hardcore scene]. People were simply growing up, and with adulthood came other priorities. Either that or they discovered that they could play music other than the 60 second, three chord assault that Hardcore Punk was.
Either way, by 1985 there were just a few bands kicking around, and the scene had gone from Hardcore to Metal to dead. Steve Risteen [ex Terminally Ill] kept bumping into Jack Kelly [ex Negative FX and Last Rights] in a 24-hour Food mart week after week. Jack Kelly, who wasn't in a band at the time, wanted to play again. So in October of 1985 Steve Risteen, Mark McKay [Terminally Ill's manager] and Jack Kelly formed Slapshot [they were originally supposed to be called Straight Satan, after the motorcycle gang which protected Charles Manson].
The threesome started writing songs and soon after Jonathan Anastas [ex Decadence and DYS] joined the band. He had been good friends with Jack Kelly through the Boston Crew, had roomed with him for a time and respected his vision for a new version of an old school Hardcore band.
There was big hype about Slapshot before they ever played a live show due to Jack Kelly's and Jonathan Anastas's reputations in Hardcore circles. And also since a friend of the band, Mike Gitter, who was writing for a lot of magazines at the time [one of which was his own zine - "xXx"], had written that Slapshot was a great live act. Note - in the Punk tradition of Malcolm McLauren and The Sex Pistols - these stories were written before the band had even played in front of an audience.
In October of 1986 Slapshot released their debut album. To save money [as the band wanted to record the album on a full 24 tracks instead of the usual low-quality 8 or 16 tracks Punk records were recorded on at the time], the group had to record from midnight to 8 AM to get the lower overnight rate.
Slapshot was about to get reinforcement in the shape Jordan Wood [ex STP, The Loved Ones and Deathwish]. He joined the band as a second guitar player right after "Back On The Map" was released. However, soon after, Jonathan Anastas left the band. Jonathan Anastas left, as the sort of extensive touring the band needed to do began to conflict with his college studies. Back to a four piece, Jordan Wood temporarily replaced Jonathan Anastas on bass until Jamie Sciarappa [ex SS Decontrol] joined the band in early 1988 and Jordan Wood returned to guitar. Jamie Sciarappa's first show with the band was on June 5 1988 at CBGB's in New York.
When the band was writing new material for their next album Jamie Sciarappa said that he'd be moving to Los Angeles and Slapshot therefore once again needed a new bass player. So in March of 1990 Mark McKay asked his friend Chris Lauria if he could fill the position. Mark McKay, Steve Risteen and Chris Lauria all knew each other from the days with Terminally Ill. Steve Risteen wanted to try out some others first but eventually Chris Lauria was their choice. In two week Chris Lauria learned to play 25 songs and the first show with the new bass player was in Allentown, Philadelphia. Three tracks, "Firewalker", "Chip On My Shoulder" and "Moment Of Truth", were then released as a 7" single called "Firewalker". Then the band released "Sudden Death Overtime" and toured the US in support of it in September and October of 1990 and in Europe February of 1991. Since this time there have been several member changes, recordings and tours. Though they are now relativly inactive, Slapshot still resurfaces from time to time to play a show to this day.

This bio was stolen and abridged from the official Slapshot site.

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