Hammergun - Texas
2003 - Stereo Recordings
By Philip Whitehouse
Go to the Hammergun website.
With a bottom end fatter than the average Southern-NASCAR-enthusiastic trailer-dweller's posterior and a surfeit of lysergic, distorted riffage taken from a more gnarled and aggressive strain of the vinum Sabbathi, Hammergun deliver six tracks of hard-assed stoner metal with a little more bite but perhaps a little less immediacy than their peers.
Only two tracks on this disc measure in at under eight minutes, and one of those is an instrumental intro - however, this doesn't mean that the band resort to the 'one note every three minutes' routine. 'Haulin' Ass' contains some fairly hooky riffage with a hint of melody buried in the dirty grooves, before slowing down to Sabbath-paced crawl, then leaving the gravel-throated vocalist and drummer (who presumably wields baseball bats instead of sticks) to compete for volume for a couple of bars.
It's all good stuff then, but there's something missing. In going for the long, long tracks, Hammergun with vaulting ambition did o'erleap themselves - they sadly don't quite have the songwriting skills to make them engaging all the way through, too often relying on long feedback drones and lurching drum rhythms to fill the space between the truly memorable riffs.
Okay if you like the style, and dirtier than most, but perhaps a bit more in the way of brevity would help next time round...
6.5/10
2003 - Stereo Recordings
By Philip Whitehouse
Go to the Hammergun website.
With a bottom end fatter than the average Southern-NASCAR-enthusiastic trailer-dweller's posterior and a surfeit of lysergic, distorted riffage taken from a more gnarled and aggressive strain of the vinum Sabbathi, Hammergun deliver six tracks of hard-assed stoner metal with a little more bite but perhaps a little less immediacy than their peers.
Only two tracks on this disc measure in at under eight minutes, and one of those is an instrumental intro - however, this doesn't mean that the band resort to the 'one note every three minutes' routine. 'Haulin' Ass' contains some fairly hooky riffage with a hint of melody buried in the dirty grooves, before slowing down to Sabbath-paced crawl, then leaving the gravel-throated vocalist and drummer (who presumably wields baseball bats instead of sticks) to compete for volume for a couple of bars.
It's all good stuff then, but there's something missing. In going for the long, long tracks, Hammergun with vaulting ambition did o'erleap themselves - they sadly don't quite have the songwriting skills to make them engaging all the way through, too often relying on long feedback drones and lurching drum rhythms to fill the space between the truly memorable riffs.
Okay if you like the style, and dirtier than most, but perhaps a bit more in the way of brevity would help next time round...
6.5/10
