Hammers of Misfortune's fifth album, 17th Street, is a song cycle about "loss and endings," though it sounds like a series of new beginnings. For starters, guitarist/lyricist/songwriter John Cobbett-- of recently disbanded SF black metal group Ludicra and onetime member of comrades-in-classic-metal/sister band Slough Feg-- has again retooled his rotating cast: Longtime drummer Chewy Marzolo returns, as do more recent additions Sigrid Sheie (organ) and Max Barnett (bass), but this is the first HoM album to feature guitarist Leila Abdul-Rauf (Saros, Amber Asylum, Vastum) and power-piped vocalist Joe Hutton (the Worship of Silence).
The band, which debuted in 2001 with the three-part rock opera The Bastard, have never shied from ambition. When I spoke with Cobbett in 2008, he said HoM's 2003 sophomore collection The August Engine was his "first attempt" to make an album as big as The Wall. 2008's sprawling Fields/Church of Broken Glass, two individual concept albums packaged together, was his second. But the music Cobbett writes is detailed enough that he doesn't need to fill four sides of vinyl to make his point. He's finally figured that out on 17th Street.
At a time when fans can get caught-up on how fast someone solos, or how ominous a back story they have to offer, HoM shake aside gimmicks and play classic progressive metal in a way that makes room for thrash, doom, NWOBHM, and legit hooks alongside honest feeling and larger concepts. Cobbett didn't spell out the specifics in the record's accompanying press materials; his songwriting and lyrics are evocative enough that it isn't necessary. These are songs about gentrification (in his hometown and elsewhere), paeans to areas of San Francisco, and stories about individuals living out their lives in those spaces-- though it's easy to ignore all of that and just go along for the air-guitaring.
Cobbett's said working with Abdul-Rauf got him to return to writing songs for the electric guitar, a claim consistently backed up by this record's incredibly emotive, vintage riffs. On opener "317", guitars entangle with a swaggering, synchronized momentum until one spirals out like the album cover's splayed lights of San Francisco. Two and a half minutes of instrumental music pass before Hutton gets all Walt Whitman with it: "We are the soil becoming dust/ We are the chrome becoming rust," etc. But even without the voice, the song's plenty expressive. It's followed by the the speedier, punchier "17th Street" with its doubled female harmonies, slick (then crunchy) guitars, and spacious organ. Lyrically, it's a focused study of a "ruthless" street outside a window (in, what you expect, is any city, anywhere), reminiscent of William T. Vollmann's descriptions of the Tenderloin district. Musically, it gallops, but maintains a 1970s airiness.
The best track, "The Grain", is a seven-minute "love" song that has guitars mirroring the vocal lines amid a number of space-stretching pastoral breakdowns. It culminates, over and over, with an anthemic multi-person chorus that you'll try to sing along with even if you can't possibly hit the notes. As far as these sorts of moments go, there's also "The Day the City Died", an ode to those cities and the places their inhabitants are heading: "This one's called I'm getting addicted/ This one's called I'm getting evicted/ This one's called another one moving away." It has a punkier vibe, but filtered through flamboyant 80s metal and, of course, scorching guitar solos. There's also a seven-minute piano-powered ballad, "Summer Tears", that had me reaching for my Queensryche albums for the first time since high school.
That's important. 17th Street is one of those metal albums that could appeal to fans of Judas Priest, Rush, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater-- lifers not in the know about the current underground, who would stumble upon these 50 minutes of old-school riffing and (actual) singing and fall in love. And, even if you have been keeping track of what's bubbling beneath the mainstream, this is in a class of its own. Cobbett's a talent, one who makes well-considered, carefully crafted music, the kind of stuff that would work well in stadiums if metal of this sort could still fill them.
