You've Got To Hammer Them Home: A Quick Review Of The Debut Single From Hammered Hulls (The Faith, Ex Hex, Des Demonas, Titus Andronicus)

In a town of super groups, and super-groups, Hammered Hulls are still something extra special. The new band -- Alec MacKaye (The Faith, Ignition, The Warmers), Mary Timony (Ex Hex, Helium, Wild Flag, Autoclave), Mark Cisneros (Deathfix, Des Desmonas, Kid Congo Powers and The Pink Monkey Birds, The Make-Up), and Chris Wilson (Titus Andronicus, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Acquaintances) -- is creating a righteous racket here on this debut single. Out on Friday via Dischord, the three cuts here make up as raucous a record as this city has heard in ages.

"Written Words" burns with a kind of end of the world-energy, a sound that's nearly desperate in its roar, while "Self Inflicted" is a more straightforward harDCore-sort of enterprise. From a certain sonic angle, some of the proto-riffs here echo, however faintly, any number of post-Revolution Summer bands on the Dischord label. If those two tracks reveal a band exhibiting a real talent at whipping up the kind of fire and fury that should be familiar to those in this city, the very brief "Looking After You" is the marriage of garage metal and harDCore. The sound on this one has a lot of metallic heft that's decidedly in debt to hardcore, not just harDCore, acts. What Don Zientara and Ian MacKaye recorded at Inner Ear Studios on this single is more furious than lots of what's been heard from this scene in ages, thanks especially to those devilish guitar-licks from Mark Cisneros and the riot-inducing martial beats from Chris Wilson. Hammered Hulls is evidence that these four musicians are still full of surprises, and still capable of shocking with the blunt force of their playing.

Hammered Hulls is out on Friday via Dischord.

More details on Hammered Hulls via the Dischord website. There's video of the first live performance of "Written Words" below. I shot the clip at the band's debut live gig, at the Black Cat 25th Anniversary Show, Night 2, in September 2018, long before I even knew what the hell this song was called.

[Photo and video: Glenn Griffith, 2018]