Hammers: Slam it down (2023)

By Brian Giffin

WHEN Hammers hit the main stage at Blacken Open Air in August last year, they really weren’t prepared for the temperature of a late winter afternoon in Central Australia, where “late winter” doesn’t really exist.

“I think we got the hottest set, on the hottest part of the hottest day,” recalls guitarist and songwriter Lucas Stone of the 35+ degrees in the blazing sun they played in.

Like the previous night’s headliners Amyl & the Sniffers, who stormed through their midnight set despite the below-zero temperature, Hammers smashed it with a typically fun and hard-driving set of heavy hitting acidic blues and stomping metal. The band’s Blacken adventure was also captured as a documentary due to be released in early April.  

“We had a film guy with us who filmed all the shenanigans and we’ve put a doco together called The Kooks of Hazard that drops on April 6,” Stone explains. “Basically, we went over there, got an RV, stayed in accommodation a couple of nights and in the RV, took the film guy with us and some mates to help out and hang out. We did the festival with six of us in the RV and we got to share the festival with three or four other bands from our roster, as well, so it was good to get to know those guys and just be hanging out and drinking beers.”

The Gold Coast-via-Lismore four piece have been creating a merry ruckus since the release of 2018’s Homeblokes EP with a combination of stoner grooves, biker metal and a dash of country that pounds as hard as their name would suggest. Right now the lads are in the middle of working on a full-length album planned for release early 2024. They had the misfortune of releasing their second EP Kicking Goals in August 2020 and watched as it was swallowed up by the global shutdown but they’ve been able to show off the tunes at a few festival dates and the occasional club show since.

“We’d like to have at least two singles out by the end of the year,” says Stone. “I reckon we’ll probably drop it first thing next year. Obviously with all the COVID shutdown over the last couple of years, we released a second EP in the middle of it and we didn’t really get to do much with that so it’s been a bit of a catch up with that one, and we’re really enjoying playing those songs live for the crowds throughout the shows. Our Japanese tour got cancelled, then our full national tour got cancelled show after show, so we just shut it down. We’re a pretty active band and we like to play around. Playing live’s the biggest part of it so it was definitely a weird time, but whatever – onwards and upwards! The slew of shows we’ve done since then have all been positive and everyone’s digging the new stuff, so it’s good.”

Hammers’ next big hit out will be a national tour with Wilmington, NC, psyche-sludge lords He Is Legend in May. It will be their first Australian visit in eight years and Stone i beyond stoked for his band to be part of it: “There’s bands you could tour with that would be a big tour support to have,” he says, “and then there’s bands that it’s more like an honour and a privilege, and they’re one of those cult status bands that we all, as individuals, love at the core of our heart as musos. To find out that they’re also awesome dudes and they’re happy to have us along for the ride is sick.”

Their planned national tour canned due to COVID, their jaunt with He Is Legend will give them the opportunity to visit some of the territories where their name is just starting to take hold.

“We did a full national tour with The Butterfly Effect last time and that saw us in Perth and Radelaide. Obviously, the east coast we’ve been up and down a few times. We don’t over-tour, but getting out to Melbourne and Sydney is still a buzz while we’re building our fanbase down there, you see the crew coming out that already knows the band and there’s a few different faces every time. The last show we did in Sydney was for one of the Frankie’s shut down shows and it was epic.”

That night was a showcase of bands from booking agency Beats Cartel and included groups that Hammers are becoming firm friends with.

“I think we played about three weeks out [from the final night],” Stone says, “and we had a ball again, like at Blacken, because that bill was specifically our roster so we had Mountain Wizard Death Cult, Astrodeath, Captives up from Melbourne, Rick Dangerous, Bare Bones, and it was a really good night. We just went on one after the other and smashed it out. The room was full and the vibe was sick. We got drunk!”

The Beats Cartel agency has been creating a tight and supportive scene for its bands over the last few years. Hammers has been able to benefit greatly from that, and also from the same co-operative environment he’s found from Gold Coast venues.

“We’re on a good thing with Beats, and on the Gold Coast […] you’ve got Christian with Mo’s and Glenno with Vinnies and we had Sam and the guys down at Eddie’s as well. It’s kind of a little hub where everyone’s got the back of everyone and there’s not much ego there. Everyone’s propping each other up. It’s cool with Beats as a roster because we have bands from Melbourne all the way up to here on our roster – Captives for example are like our scene brothers. We’re like one big band. Whenever we get the chance to play together I don’t think we give a fuck about playing, it’s just for the hangs!”

Hammers do care about playing though, a lot, and like other artists we’ve interviewed lately, Lucas Stone has seen a pleasing return of crowds to live shows in the aftermath of COVID lockdowns.

“The music industry I’ve been in for a long time and it’s undergone heaps of changes over the years and I’ve had great successes and great pitfalls throughout the whole thing. You get the moments that are sad but equally exciting, at times, and it all comes down to the proactivity of the general population and how important they deem that little part of our culture. Just seeing people kick off again and making an effort to get out physically and off [their] fucking devices and enjoy some organic shit again is good.”