LISTEN: HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE FTW

Hammers Of Misfortune’s upcoming album 17th Street (listen here) totally blew me away on the very first listen. It was one of those virginal experiences in which I knew nothing about the band, no expectations, just maximum jamming. As precious as an unpolluted music encounter is, I’ve already skewed your HoM relationship by telling you that 17th Street is awesome, so jeez, this might be the time to break it to you that HoM are hipsters. Like, super-hipsters, hipsters so hipster that the term hipster doesn’t even capture them; let’s brand them hipsterers. More on that in a second.

The awesome news is that it’s easy to love the loose, proggy HoM, and not a total stretch to make a philosophical link to left-field greats Thought Industry (also a Metal Blade act a million years ago). In among the avant-thrash, my ear grabbed bits of David Bowie, That Dog, and Gentle Giant, and I worship that uncompressed, trebly, chorusy ’80s prog metal guitar sound. So you love. I sure love!

But its style and range only almost wipe from your mind the fact that 17th Street seems to be a concept-ish album about the gentrification of HoM mainman John Cobbett’s San Francisco, which is basically the hipsterist thing I’ve ever goddamn heard, like a less shrill Coheed And Cambria all mad about the demise of basement punk venues and vegan co-ops in America’s proudest, priciest city. I mean, my ugh-filter is diamond-grade, but even I have to skip mid-album shitfit “The Day The City Died.” Even so, 17th Street is one of 2011’s best and HoM one of metal’s most promising! Listen at NPR.org!

-ADF

Hammers Of Misfortune’s third album 17th Street is out Tuesday on Metal Blade.