District-based hardcore pioneers Scream haven’t issued a studio album since “Fumble,” which was released in 1993 but recorded years earlier. The band reunited in 2009, but “Complete Control Sessions,” one in a series of releases tied to the Complete Control Radio show, is its first
album of new material since. It’s as good a comeback vehicle as anyone might have hoped.
A seven-song EP recorded in Dave Grohl’s studio (he’s a longtime compatriot and, pre-Nirvana, a member), “Sessions” masters the tricky calculus of a punk-rock reunion: Sound the same as you used to, and it’s sad; sound different, and you might as well not have bothered. Songs like “Jamin at 606,” which seems to have been not so much recorded as shot out of a cannon, and the 1988-meets-2011 “Stopwatch” get the nostalgia/newness balance just right, paying homage to the band’s past without cannibalizing it.
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