Hammers of Misfortune "17th Street" & "Dead Revolution": [Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight #6]

What's up? Welcome to the latest edition of Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight.With this one, I'm going to be covering two albums by a wonderful band from San Francisco called Hammers of Misfortune. Actually, nowadays they hail from Montana. When I say "they," I mean the two main members, John Cobbett and his wife Sigrid Sheie. They relocated to Montana pre-pandemic, but they'll always be considered a San Francisco band—and these two albums definitely came out while they were still living and rehearsing in the city.

I think I’ll start with my favorite Hammers of Misfortune album: 17th Street. Most Hammers of Misfortune fans would probably say their debut album The Bastard is their favorite. Fantastic album—no doubt. A marvelous debut, definitely more in the black metal vein and very medieval. I remember when John first formed the band and described it to me. He said, "We're going to get medieval on your ass." (Little Pulp Fiction quote there.) And he wasn’t lying—that first album is very Dungeons and Dragons. It’s great.

Hammers of Misfortune - "17th Street" (2011)

But I just like this era of the band a little more. By this time, he was writing more rock-oriented music—kind of sad songs. But when I say "sad," I don't mean depressing. This album is not depressing at all. It's very exciting. There are ups and downs, but there’s a thread of sadness throughout it. I believe it’s a concept album about the decline of San Francisco—or a city—but I think SF was the inspiration. When this came out, things were going from bad to worse in the city.

I love this record. The production is fantastic—probably the best production Hammers of Misfortune has had so far.

Hammers of Misfortune, 2011. Photo by Craig McGillvray

John has a knack for writing really catchy, heavy, rocking riffs—but anybody can do that. His riffs are interesting. There’s equal parts heaviness and beautiful, softer moments. There are some truly beautiful songs on this album.

I had the pleasure and honor of drumming for them when they toured for this album. The original drummer, Chewy, left shortly after the record was finished. They had a tour coming up, so they reached out to me. I did it, and it was a lot of fun—an honor to tour with musicians and people of that caliber.

Unfortunately, the tour wasn’t very successful. Hammers of Misfortune fans are few and far between in places like Kansas. I don't even know if we played Kansas, but we did go across the country and played some meagerly attended shows. Still, it was a blast and I’m glad I did it.

Max from Old Grandad, my musical partner of many years, played bass on 17th Street and did the tour with me. That was a big selling point—getting to hit the road with Max. I’d never toured with him before. The furthest Old Grandad ever went from SF was like Lake Tahoe or something. So this was our chance to drink nightly in a different town—pretty much like we did at home, just somewhere new every night.

I love this record. Fantastic.

Hammers of Misfortune - "Dead Revolution" (2016)

Now, the follow-up album is Dead Revolution. I played drums on this album. You might think it’d be my favorite for obvious reasons—but no, I still give the edge to 17th Street because of the production. Don’t get me wrong, Dead Revolution sounds good—no complaints—but 17th Street just sounds a little better to me.

Musically, this one's in the same direction as the previous album, maybe a little heavier. It’s kind of a mix of Deep Purple-style psychedelic moments and early Metallica. That’s the best way I can describe it.

I love this era. These two albums feel like sister albums, musically and thematically. I’m not sure if Dead Revolution is a concept album, but there are definitely familiar themes from 17th Street that carry over.

We recorded it at Light Rail Studios in San Francisco. Unfortunately, Max didn’t stick around long enough to record this one—he bailed after that rough tour. I stuck around because I wanted to be on a Hammers of Misfortune album. I’d put so much work into learning those complex songs—these aren’t easy tunes to pick up. I'd say they’re second only to Ulysses Siren in difficulty. So after all that effort, damn it, I wanted to be on wax with these guys.

We recorded it pretty quickly. Light Rail had a cool live room, big drum room. I used my old Tama Rockstar kit (which I recently sold), and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Funny story about how recording this almost jeopardized a Death Angel show… I was recording this album literally up until the day before I was flying to Europe with Death Angel to do some summer festivals. The day before the flight, I was still at Light Rail doing percussion overdubs because John was super inspired by old AC/DC. You know how they’d add shakers, handclaps, stuff like that? A good example is Rock ’n’ Roll Damnation off Powerage. You can hear all kinds of percussion pushing the song forward.

So I was totally on board—"Yeah, let’s do it!" John had me doing a fast shaker part for one song, and it went the whole way through. Like a five- or six-minute song. After a few takes, my shoulder was wrecked. I think I did it three times in a row to get layered takes—so that’s like 18 minutes of straight shaking. My shoulder was killing me. I could feel tendons moving around. I had to sleep on my side that night from the pain.

On the flight to Europe, I was just praying: “God, I hope this goes away—we’ve got a big festival show tomorrow.” Backstage, it was still feeling weird. I was warming up, stretching, but I could still feel a lump or something in there.

We go on stage, kick into something like Evil Priest—a fast Death Angel track. No warm-up, just right into it. I’m playing, then I go up to my ride cymbal, playing fast 16ths, and suddenly—my hand locks up. The stick rolls out. I’m like, “Oh shit!” My hand’s frozen like a claw.

Damien looks at me like, “What the hell’s going on?” I’m telling my tech, “Hand me a drumstick!” He gives me one, and somehow, I powered through and finished the song. Between songs, I’m massaging my shoulder like, “Oh my god, I gotta survive this set.” My drum tech Fozzy (rest in peace) was just like, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

But I made it through the show—and I never told Death Angel about any of this… until now. So yeah, you can blame Hammers of Misfortune for that.

See you next week!

–Bleeding Priest