Every song Hammok write—whether it takes the form of clanking noise-rock, hurtling post-hardcore, or punk ripped straight from the chest and then dismantled in its own distortion—is made to be heard in a mosh pit. The Norwegian trio’s debut EP, however, was forced to act out those motions in absentia; singer-guitarist Tobias Osland, bassist Ole Benjamin Thomassen, and drummer Ferdinand Aasheim formed the band during the era of COVID lockdowns. Four years later and now settled into their second album, When Does This Place Become Our Scene, the Norwegian musicians should feel euphoric tearing through their music in live settings. But as the album attests, escaping containment isn’t necessarily the same as attaining freedom if you’re met with a reality where the local music scene dissipated, fraudulent metrics are standard, and countries normalize genocide.
Hammok pack the album with the claustrophobia of their pandemic origins and the maniacal energy of their recent tours, forcing the two head to head to provoke the senses with overwhelming noise. Their guitars bite at the air like a guard dog snarling at intruders at the first whiff of their presence. Before Osland even lays out his grievances on opener “The Scene,” he lets out a tortured howl that rips through the air like pain personified, wedging itself into a distinct, unforgettable octave. “Sit the fuck down/Get your guard down/Let us get it together,” he screams. Suddenly you’re cross-legged on the grass and awaiting his next orders.
When Does This Place Become Our Scene is billed as a call for cultivating your own community, and while Hammok do crave a robust music scene in Oslo, they don’t speak in didactic phrases or build moral goalposts to get there. In practice, they operate similarly to Mclusky or their Norwegian neighbors Honningbarna by anchoring the bass up front and hammering confrontational lyrics in fragments of fury. A bluesy guitar riff on slow number “Tap Water” lends a dark humor to Osland’s laments about how depression has robbed him of the thrills of self-immolation. Aasheim’s blistering drumming on “CND” accelerates the protagonist’s paranoid thoughts about the weight of expectations and gorging himself on creatine. Written after Hammok criticized Øya Festival’s ownership for dismissing the power of boycotts and were swiftly reprimanded after stepping offstage, “BANG” morphs from a heavy bounce into an onslaught of noise-rock pummeling; for a minute straight, Osland repeatedly screams “Sold a war/Profit/Then it’s old” until his throat is raw. That’s the trick those bands passed down to Hammok: pulsate with brash post-hardcore until it becomes downright intoxicating on its own.
Occasionally, as Hammok ride a continuous, albeit thrashing, hook, Osland clocks in for an extra shift, turning to production techniques to amplify the band’s emotional edge. The final stretch of “Gooning for Free” blows out the volume in half-second bursts, like solar flares of noise lashing outwards to singe the speaker at random intervals; after steadying “Thirst” with a barrel-scraping bassline and stiff downbeats on a tom-tom, Osland layers distortion and fuzz over his guitar until the texture is perverse.
That time behind the production board is well spent, even if it’s exhausting. Osland’s biggest breakthrough arrived after he nearly scrapped “Groundbreaker,” face in hands, then tried to salvage the song in post. Fed up trying to fix stalled ideas in the track, he accidentally created a low, thundering explosion behind the soundboard and looped it four times to end the song—a grim sound of defeat. After toying around with it the next few days, though, Osland recognized the promise of its menacing, nature-like warning. He slid a kickdrum under it, the trio picked their instruments back up to flesh out the song in a new way, and they found themselves reinvigorated by the monstrous sloshing of industrial guitars, shuffling breakbeats, and unhinged screams. Just shy of five minutes, “Groundbreaker” is the longest track in their discography and earns every second. It feels like stepping outside into the thick of a thundering downpour, spotting the lightning in the distance, and watching as the band replicates the sound and the hair-raising feeling that only nature’s raw power elicits. At last, Hammok are back outdoors.
