West London’s Air Hammer first single form their forthcoming album ‘Sword of Fire’ album comes wrapped in a sleeve depicting a fore arm with the words ‘pissed off’ carved in it with a razor blade. Are they ‘4 real’? Their press release talks of guerrilla gigs shut down by the police (no fans of punk apparently) and they’ve been cautioned several times. Life on the edge eh?
They claim they’re inhabiting that rarest of cross genre experiments ‘Music Hall / Punk’ or ‘Oi, where’s me washboard you wanker’ if you will. All of which suggests that at the very least Air Hammer are going to confound a few expectations. Slipping the CD into the player we are confronted with lead track ‘Pissed Off’. What can they possible be pissed off about? The police for stopping their gigs? The government? The war in Iraq? America? The myriad of injustices we encounter each and every day? Nope, Air Hammer are pissed off at ‘her’. What she’s done is a little less obvious, but they’re really pissed off. To demonstrate how pissed off they’re going to play some sub standard pub punk at yer. Now you can feel their pain. That’ll teach her, the floozy. The music hall element to their music seems to be, um, subtle, although perhaps it will reveal itself in their live show (if the filth don’t close ‘em down man).
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Wait up though, second track ‘From Me to You’ finds their inner music hall by having a rinky dink piano line reminiscent of aggravating smiley merchants Dogs Die in Hot Cars before morphing into baroque guitars Brian May would discard as a little too pompous. This time the punk element has gone AWOL. Final track ‘Chess’ is a stripped down acoustic guitar and lone voice vitriolic attack on what seems to be the wasted youth of today and how they should play chess or something. Quite frankly who cares?
Air Hammer are all over the place but not in a positive way. Each track is distinct from the others and they seem to be in search of their own sound. Jumping on bandwagons such as guerrilla gigs does not make a band interesting or relevant. Nor does rehashing old tricks such as carving your arm up with a razor blade. When Richey Edwards carved ‘4 real’ into his arm it was a shocking insight into an individuals pain and commitment to one of the most fanatically followed bands of the early 90’s. Air Hammers version reeks of shock tactics and sensationalism. Oh and the vocalist has decided to put Rev. before his name. Twat.
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