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I love how metal grows everywhere. It is an unstoppable weed. Throw inhumane rent and shit weather at it, and it still thrives in New York. Throw Hurricane Katrina at it, and Big Easy metal is stronger than ever. Put it on a glacier, even take away electricity – Immortal made it work. After humanity blows itself to bits, survivors in some garage-cum-bunker will still hack through “Die by the Sword” with gear looted from Guitar Center. I’m a fan already.
San Francisco ain’t quite there yet, but “17th Street” says it’s en route. Its lyrics are about poverty, bankruptcy, how people step on each other – all hallmarks of its titular Mission District setting. (In interviews, however, Hammers of Misfortune mastermind John Cobbett insists that 17th Street could be anywhere.)
It’s instructive to look at “317″, the song preceding the title track of 17th Street. “317″ reads like a punk manifesto: “We are the soil becoming dust, we are the chrome becoming rust, we are the ones you’re standing on, we are the floor you dance upon”. This isn’t a rant; it’s reality. In 2007, according to Wikipedia (supported elsewhere across the web), “the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%”.
That’s grim, and Cobbett – John’s brother Aaron, who directed the “17th Street” video – could have played it straight. He could have portrayed some gritty dystopia with people racing to the bottom. Instead, he made a dreamy mood piece, sort of a-day-in-the-life-of-a-San-Francisco-bike-messenger intercut with Hammers rehearsal footage. It’s low-budget, and the shakycam doesn’t help. But technique aside, it works. There’s something so-wrong-it’s-right about urban visuals set to ’70s prog organ and female ren faire vocals. Maybe I got the century wrong with “ren faire”, but the point is that the sound comes from another time. Urban screams “now”; metal screams “any time but”.
Sure, not always – plenty of grindcore and sludge pounds “now” into your face. But “now” can be pretty shitty, and metal can be a great way to escape “now”. It’s not about living in the past or pining for the future. It’s about experiencing time in a wider sense. That Metallica tape you had as a kid in the ’80s – it’s still valid. Trace back from it to Motörhead to Sabbath, then trace back to the blues, then trace back to Africa, then go back to the cradle of civilization, then look up at star light coming from millions of light years away. “Now” is an atom by comparison. That can be comforting.
On its face, “17th Street” isn’t comforting. It’s born of class struggle and fear: “Predator, I am game, citizen is my name”. But the video shows an alternative. Enter the rehearsal space, and you see hands, lots of them, pouring out music. Shots of faces are few. The emphasis is not on people, but their effort. They are hooded and obscured, but they make glorious sound. It is the weed pushing up through concrete.
. . .
BUY 17TH STREET
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Hammers store at Metal Blade
Hammers of Misfortune official merch
. . .
HoM actually make the idea that 17th Street could be anywhere explicit within the album itself. “The Day the City Died” posits a whole list of possible locations: Oakland, Portland, Brooklyn, Austin, London, LA, Boston, Berlin, Savannah, Glasgow, Moscow, Detroit.
Great write-up.
I actually thought those were the places to which all of the people leaving the titular dying city were moving. Or maybe I’m dumb and need to go back and re-read the lyric sheet.
Anyway, this is still one of my favorite albums of 2011, and stacks up well against the best of what I’ve heard so far in 2012. Now if only Ludicra would get back together . . .
I guess it’s a matter of interpretation. The line is “This one’s called I’m moving to _______,” but I read the interchangeable city name as indicative of Cobbett’s belief that the same thing is happening everywhere. But maybe I’m just projecting.
There’s not much left to interpretation in that particular line, I mean if you’re moving to a place…still, “the city” could be any place and I’m sure that’s the feel that Cobbett is trying to express, even if his experience is with San Francisco.
Accidentally read that as cum-bunker. The dirtiest room in the fap-fortress.
Thank you for providing a name for my pornogrind band.
i never warmed up to 17th street. i loved it’s predecessors though. (and all the earlier albums)
i should give it another spin, but mostly this article made me want to revisit Ludicra’s swansong more than anything just by making think of mister cobbett.
and that i shall do, right now.
It’s a fairly cheap and unimaginative video, and the article feels like reading a little too much into rehearsal footage when it seems that it’s just all they could afford to go with. Nothing wrong with that as such, you work with the budget you have and what not…if the point of the video is to just get the song out there, fine. Still, this type of ’shaky, fast-forwarded picture runs through a bunch of places’ (god not another flight of stairs) really is something I could do without.
The new Hammers album is not bad, but The Day the City Died is the only song that really gets me going…I guess The Locust Years style is what I really go for with this band more than the slower tempo prog metal stuff.
This is one of the worst attempts at metal I’ve heard in awhile. It’s just more pity party hipster metal (heavier alternative rock), the video being about a bike messenger (I guess?) is even more atypical and hilarious.