Hackman

The New Normal (Small Stone)
by Craig R. Regala

Fucking so goddamn excited about this I didn’t wait for the promo and bought it online offa iTunes. Buck a pop, seven songs, a deal it is. These guys got lineage-from Milligram and Lamont, placing them in Boston’s gulping hardrockcore and whoop-ass drunk-speed-rock by the 40 oz. That’s a fine thing. It’s also history, and as that quasi-fascist Henry Ford said, “history is bunk,” so you can ignore it (dummy) and dive deeply into this riff-rock Armageddon. Join me in reveling in the continuation of the slashing deep burn many rock units from Boston have utilized. Yeah, I’ll go right ahead and name some: Slapshot, Bullet La Volta, Aerosmith, DYS, We’re All Gonna Die, Only Living Witness, Stompbox, Moving Targets, Unnatural Axe, Miltown. Names you should know if your Boston shelf is bigger than your dick piercing.

So, just as it’s “easier for a rich man to get his fucking camel through the eye of a needle, than into heaven” (The Bible. It’s in the goddamn Bible, page 969, New James version. The one with pictures), its easy to fail to understand how deft this is. Any retard with access to a Hot Topic, Guitar Center, and student loan can be currently loud, but can they bolt it together to move? No. They can’t. And yes, this does. Hackman hops in the same earthmover/bulldozer Fu Manchu uses to shove around ’70s monster-duh riffs with their Cali-core ’80 attack by those bands mentioned above to give it the proper “Boston, you’re my home” feel. Along the way, they road trip some groove grease from COC, Karma To Burn/Treasure Cat, and the Midwestern “buckle-on-rock’s-belt” of Black Mt. Creeper, Devil To Pay, and Burnout, whom all undoubtedly abstracted that grease from a life of hearing older brothers play Not Fragile by BTO (Bachman Turner Overdrive: Splitting the difference between Mountain/Molly Hatchet/April Wine, they’ve been covered by The Soundtrack Of Out Lives and Acid King). That record being so ubiquitous in the Great Lakes area in the ’70s and ’80s that it was free to all girls who’d play it even just one time.

So, what’s the point spread? 7 down to any final four team. Ergo: It rumbles exactly right, is a bit short for an LP (c’mon, you guys could kill so many great covers you’d make Gacy look like a piker), ends with a coda throwaway with a cool feeling, and goes light on the howling/melody/personality of having a more active singer.

Here’s hoping these guys keep going and take the bull by the horns and hit the stage now and again. Add to a night of Solace videos, Cuda, strippers with Alice In Chains tattoos, Fu Manchu, Karma To Burn/Treasure Cat bootlegs, a trip to the Roadburn festival, and mid-period Cathedral.
(www.smallstone.com)