Hammer Party

LP/CD released in 1986 on Homestead (HMS044), reissued in 1992 on CD by Touch and Go (TG92) and AuGoGo (ANDA157)

What more need be said? The CD has two excellent EPs, plus Lungs. I don't think there was a Blast First edition of this, though I've seen several references to a Homestead UK version, which may or may not have been distro'd by Blast First. There is no LP version of the Touch and Go release, since they reissued all three EPs on vinyl. For reviews see the individual EP pages.

reviews:

HAMMER HORRORS

RUN if you can and hide all your ears because Big Black--three hurricanes in a lift--are coming. They're not prejudiced, they'll infect anyone and in just a few stout weeks their new EP will be cracking down upon our delicately supine senses. These filthy guitars will slit open your gullet, microphones protruding through orifices you'd always hoped were sacred. Big Black. Body beat. Goodbye trepidation, bring on the dancing scourge.

We're defenceless, and it's more contagious than you think because on this compilation the songs are actually relics, from the "Lungs" and "Bulldozer" EPs of four and five years ago, when Steve Albini was but a boy...with a faithful drum machine and impressionable friends. They came together to menace the indie scene with a rationally drubbing plod--shaved rhythms so easily implanted, crucifying riffs and lyrics so maliciously slanted.

But look, spell "Live In A Hole" backwards and...Satan's playthings..."Eloh A Ni Evil"! Evil, evil, EVIL with a guitar-inciting blindness, beaten metal with a sweet judder needling us. Needles? AIDS! CONDOMS!

The Americans bloody build condominiums and the liner notes here say "we especially like getting packages of things" and you call that coincidental? They're expecting us to send condoms by the planeload, just so they can give them out like brave patrons, riding the AIDS bandwagon, like Kamikaze matrons into Nobel HQ. TNT stripped to their spines obliterating their own sense of ceremony. They're gone mad since "Lungs" or the cesspool majesty of "Cables", learning how to stir up the gnashing seas of today's morosely convoluted despair. As bands get crispier and wispier. Big Black have the look of the lunatic.

The sound of lunatics. "Texas" and thrash and rock 'n' roll, or "I'm A Mess" which, as James Anderton is my witness, sharply skewers both eyballs. So many considered them merely Triceratops with teething trouble until "Atomizer" killed all cynicism. People now love and need them. "Hammer Party" may be the early shears, wriggling anew in relentless fury but rarely has a guitar sounded so grim. You ought to hear this.

It's not a cure for anything but these days disease is all we've got going for us.

MICK MERCER

liner notes:

this album is a re-issue of the first two big black eps. lungs, originally issued in december, 1982 and bulldozer, released the following december. big black's line up changed between the two recrods. the members were: on lungs, steve albini playing most everything, roland being roland, and john bohnen bleating sax bleats. mark hayes yelled a little on one song, but he turned into a total dick and doesn't really warrant the mention. on bulldozer, steve again on vocals and guitar (ching), santiago durango on guitar (vroom), jeff pezzati on bass and roland being roland again. lungs was recorded in two different apartments in bad neighborhoods in chicago. it was mixed at studiomedia. the 4-track recorder was borrowed from sam fishkin for a case of beer. bulldozer was recorded at a real live studio and mixed at another one. iain burgess engineered it. much of the money for the production of bulldozer came from then-chicago-based fever records. their patience in waiting for a return on their investment is appreciated by the band and those cloes to it. we had toyed with the idea of re-printing the original inserts from those two records, but much of what is on them seems misguided and naive. we had faith then, i suppose, but that faith proved groundless, and to reiterate what was a mistake then, seems a much greater mistake now. in the original edition of lungs, there were also supplementary insters, some of which included: dollar bills, rubber animals, locks of will tizard's hair, tiny fish hooks, crayola sketches, trini lopez albums, bloody gauze, blasting caps, firecrackers, squirt pistols (loaded), antique shop cutlery, bazooka comics, bruce lee trading cards, scary photographs, old condoms and a bunch of other shit. bulldozer was much simpler. it came with an insert and a poster of some scary old people in a nursing home. there were 200 of them made in acid-etched galvanized steel jackets though. they weighed a friggin ton, too.

there was something very exciting about being in a band then. there were places to play, and people would come out to see bands. in the time since then we've grown more jaded. maybe. it could be that there's a lot less to get excited about now. the more i think about it, actualy, that seems themost plausible reason for everything to have stagnated the way it has. if we were just starting out at what we do now, our enthusiasm and certainly our patience would be less. it's pretty doubtful we would have even tried, actually. the deck is pretty thoroughly stacked these days.

if you want to find grounds for criticism, it's there all right. we were trying to figure it all out, we still are, actually. time puts everything into weird perspective. what sounded wild then sounds timid now thanks to the numbing effect of the myriad trends we've been subjected to since. we were proud of this shit though it was pretty good then. honest. we still like it. just don't expect 1986.

the people we owed our thanks to then, we probably still owe now. that's laziness for you. none of them have been forgotten, but the process of thanking has been. sorry about that, it's the best we could do at the time.

well, look, it's really pointless for me to go on any more like this. i mean, fuck, this is all old news, right? the record's there. we hope you like it an everything, but it's after midnight and i'm still at work. real big rock stars man. we've got straight jobs that would make you slit your goddamned wrists and we're still always broke.

you can write to us, and we'll read your letters and some fo them are really great, and we usually make mental notes to answer them, because, well, you did take the time to write, and that's mroe than any of us ever did, but shit, you know, there's bills to pay and the eight to five thing going on all the time, and there's just no friggin' way we're gonna be able to. sometimes we get to two or three, and sometimes i'll get fed up and spend a whole weekend answering mail, and there's still a goddamned laundry bag of it sitting there when i'm done. but really, honest, we're not assholes. we've just got other shit to do most of the time. the address is post office box 442 evanston, illinois 60204. we like getting packages of things. hint hint.

--steve