Hank IV

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I don't care how many goddamn cute hobo bands there are out there right now. Not two runny shits. There's something Hank IV knows that few other current "of interest" bands realize, and it's a painfully simple thing: guitars were meant to sound like this, not that (pick something). That's as plainly as it can be put. This is twin-guitar punk rock in a class of its own, driving more than dueling and hot-sauce-free. I'd say "power with taste" but then I'd have to kill myself. I will say that III is Hank Baby's third and finest album yet and they are, in short, a band whose every move is worthy of your utmost attention. "For this record (their second for Siltbreeze), Thee Hanks opted to spend zero dollars and buried themselves deep inside their very own Shill Building studio for a good, long while. Sightings became scarce. Promises of "work" being "done" were made but who really knew what was going on? To be fair, The Shill has its fair share of distractions. Imagine Plato's Retreat, except like a basement in the Tenderloin. I think they only went outside for sandwiches from the East Coast West Deli on Polk Street, like that one time in the street when Bob McDonald told me about that Venom single he owns for the seventeenth time. Pffft... Bob, playboy, inventor (of "The Full Compliment") and as powerful and confounding a front-man as you're likely to find ambulating in today's scene. Hawnk Quatre (as they're called in France) is both an exercise and exorcism for this hardcore guy from Bum Kon all grown-up. "Anyway, the result of their self-imposed exile is this album bearing the aroma of fuck you coupled with a faint flutter of fuck me. It's eight songs in 25 minutes of loud, angry, intelligent, rock 'n' roll punk and it's from San Francisco. Beyond that, the rhythms actually have a rhythm--a loud, all-rock rhythm, in fact. It's shocking and practically akin to reinventing the wheel 'round these un-rocking parts. Great--and now the world'll probably explode. Do I gotta pick a cut to exalt? "Down in the Dumps" springs forth. Hopefully the punks follow suit. Portfolio played it for me when I visited and he just sat back, smiling. I was too. It was creepy." --Mitch Cardwell "Hank IV plays desperate man-style punk in the vein of Minute to Pray-era Flesheaters. Throw in some of the sociopathic scorch of The Pagans and touches of earlier Siltbreeze satellites like Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and you got a great pro-rock primitive, one that combines accelerated jams with gut-busting vocals and the kinda furious delivery that makes it sound totally non-contemporary." --Volcanic Tongue