Fresh Picks: Hummer – Catchy, Gritty, Gruff.
Hummer – Warrington, England, United Kingdom.
‘Two engineers and an academic playing catchy, melodic Punk music.’
Don’t let the word ‘melodic’ fool you or start a series of alarm bells that causes you to have some sort of internet-based meltdown and don’t pretend not to know exactly what I’m talking about.
Warrington Punks Hummer have been slogging it out since 2007 under various names and formats, with prompt changes due to the struggle that it is to play in an underground band. The current format has been live since 2011 with the first output produced from the stable line-up entitled, Work.Home.Bed, released earlier this year.
The debut is as good as you’d expect from a band that list the likes of Leatherface, Hot Water Music, Alkaline Trio, Jawbreaker, The Lawrence Arms and Social Distortion as influences, with gritty and grounded melodic Punk-Rock and insightful lyrics well weaved through seven debut tracks.
The aptly titled and relatable ‘Quarter Life Crisis’ is full of Frankie Stubbs and Leatherface-isms with nods to old-school Hot Water Music in the sharp backing vocals and bass-work.
‘Stand Down’ is another standout track where once again, the word ‘melodic’ is manifested in the tuneful but well grounded Punk-Rock on offer without any statement of ‘that’s not Punk‘ insight.
Hummer are also particularly adept at crafting the slower more Alternative Rock stylistics that you knew were coming after reading that influence list. However, despite this and despite down-tempo tracks such as ‘Older And Wiser’ and ‘Have Rage, Will Travel’, Hummer’s bite is still consistent and unrelentingly driven.
The band are currently signed to Horn & Hoof Records who we hope to be seeing more of in the future:
- For updates, find Hummer on Facebook and Twitter.
- The band have some demos on SoundCloud as well as Work.Home.Bed available on Spotify to stream and iTunes digitally.
- Hardcopies can be found via Horn & Hoof website.
- Horn & Hoof can be found via Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, bandcamp and their Official Website.
‘[…] You call this cynicism, I call it realism, buzz-words wont make me richer […]’
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