Hammer Persuasion – a nasty mugging or Ingrid Pitt making coercive suggestions?
Apparently this is neither, but rather the debut album from a Rockhampton Queensland quartet. The logo and accompanying booklet have a charming childlike quality – this s not meant to be as patronising as it sounds. In the now of photoshop and instagram where everything is tweaked to within an ounce of its pixelated life, to see brightly coloured drawings of various styles adorning the booklet was a treat for my aging retinas.
Onto to the contents of the spinny silver bit now. What Hammer Persuasion serve up is Melodic Death Metal. So far so generic you may think. Where this is different to many In Flames/ Swansong era Carcass clones is that these Aussies lay it all on with a JCB. The bands melodic side has them wearing Maiden and Priest patches with pride on their Battle Jackets. However the Death Metal sensibilities do not take a back seat. The twin vocals of Andrew Poots (also bass) and Gerard Ryan (also guitar) work well together with one handling the low end with aplomb whilst the other has an almost black metal rasp. (Fuck knows which is which). Drummer Brett Glover blasts in the right places and offers respite too. Guitarist Joseph Dundas has the chops and soaring solos to keep the energy up throughout. The band sound as tight as the proverbial gnats nether region but do not wander into the geometry teacher territory of tech/prog which would have had me reaching for the mouse (not stop button any more this golden age we live in eh?).
This is a tough album to review. Not because it is hard to access or leaves the listener searching for deeper meanings. It is hard to review as every time I reach for the keyboard I start banging my head and air drumming. This is a good metal album. The kind that helps you remember why you stopped taping the charts on a Sunday and started taping Tommy Vance on a Friday night instead.
Drop Dead has a cheesy solo in it that has added quadruple figures to my calorie count for the day but just adds to the anthemic quality of the track. These guys are from the beef capital of Oz so they need some fromage to top their burgers I suppose. They enjoy an acoustic break but then so do I but never leave it too long before the riffs are raging again. In parts they are reminiscent of early Children of Bodom without the keys but as that band are now the new metal Marmite I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on it.
Other highlights on the album Under the Black Light , The Hills Will Burn and Necropsy of Human Mind offer up more fist pumping moments that have given this listener a good idea of Hammer Persuasion’s live show – horns aloft, foot on the monitor , beer chugging , headbanging , good fucking times! Let’s hope they grace European shores some time soon.
(7/10 Matt Mason)
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