Audio By Carbonatix
Hookers vocalist Adam Neal is a changed man. When he and his mates (guitarist Noel Reucroft, bassist Pat Smith and drummer Paul Bishop, recently replaced by Chris Hamilton) first picked up their instruments in 1995, he was a middling punk-rocker who washed regularly, did his homework and listened to the Devil Dogs twice a day. Then the singer discovered Europe’s diabolical master of horror, Paul Naschy, and he hasn’t been quite right since.
“Paul Naschy is the equivalent of Boris Karloff in Spain,” explains Neal. “I’m a huge fan. I think I’ve seen his movie Mark of the Devil about a hundred times. And Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman–man, I went over the top with that movie. I went on this two-day binge where I did nothing but smoke pot and watch that movie over and over. I think I almost had a nervous breakdown there for a while.
“That was around about the time we recorded the new album, actually,” he adds, laughing. “It really affected us–in kind of a bad way, I think.”
The jury is still out on that one. After all, the Hookers have never been Boy Scouts. Prior to their “transformation,” Neal and company were a slash-and-burn guitar outfit capable of keeping up with all but the noisiest of noisemongers. Black Lung and Repent, indie imprints that shun anything that’s insufficiently ballsy, released singles by the combo. And Neal once played skins for two of the raunchiest groups in recent memory, Nine Pound Hammer and recent Westword profile subject Nashville Pussy (“Pussy Whipped,” May 21).
Still, none of their previous records even hinted at the odious intensity that surfaces on Satan’s Highway, the Hookers’ new album on Scooch Pooch records. Chock-full of gleefully graphic ditties with names like “Get Fucked,” “12 Gauge Reaction” and “Welcome the Beast,” Highway is a raw, chaotic pileup of Black & Decker riffs and grandiose metal imagery that will no doubt have members of the PMRC scrambling for their torches and pitchforks. Even Neal admits the record is a dramatic departure from the band’s earlier punk efforts. But as he explains, “Noel and I wanted it to do something different. The punk and rock-and-roll scenes have gotten pretty stagnant lately. There’s a few good bands out there right now, like the Candy Snatchers and Electric Frankenstein, but mostly it’s nothing but garage shit, and it all sounds the same. I mean, after you’ve heard a couple of Mummies and Headcoats records, you pretty much get the picture, you know what I mean? We wanted to separate ourselves from that and at the same time be true to our influences.”
Not surprisingly, Neal’s muses are every bit as depraved as he is. As a boy, he was raised on AC/DC, Kiss and, of course, Black Sabbath. “We’re big Sabbath freaks,” he admits. “We like stoner rock of any kind.” Later he discovered the pissed-off minimalism of the Ramones, the Misfits, the New Bomb Turks and the Didjits. But it was the three-chord felons in the Dwarves (see “Standing Tall,” April 24, 1997) who really tripped the singer’s trigger. Says Neal, “When Noel and I heard Blood, Guts and Pussy for the first time, we knew we wanted to be in a punk band. I mean, that album was so hardcore. First of all, it’s thirteen minutes long. And it’s completely vulgar. Then, on the other hand, it’s really funny. The Dwarves made the idea of being in a punk band seem so, well, cool.”
Today the Dwarves’ aura still looms large over the Hookers’ music. Reucroft’s infernal guitar chops often echo those of the axman known as He Who Cannot Be Named, and Neal’s beastly growl at times hints at Blag Dahlia’s pill-addled bleating. Yet it’s the Dwarves’ macabre wit that seems to have made the biggest impression on the foursome. When Neal declares that he’s a “brimstone cowboy hung like a steed” during the chorus of “Tear You Apart,” you can’t help but believe that his tongue is tucked away firmly in his cheek–or someone else’s. Neal is the first to admit that much of the Hookers’ bold posturing is merely a spoof. “Highway certainly has a sense of humor about it,” he acknowledges. “That’s what I think makes the record so entertaining.”
Of course, some people don’t get the joke–and Tim Warren, the owner of Crypt, is among them. Having heard the band’s early material, Warren all but guaranteed the Hookers that he would release their first album. He even went so far as to include the album’s title cut on a Crypt sampler. But when he received the LP in its finished state–demonic sound bites and all–he beat a hasty retreat. “I think it was just too much for Tim to take,” says Neal, chuckling. “I don’t think he understood exactly where we were coming from with it. Lately he’s been going through this country, garage-y phase. So when we handed him this pseudo-black-metal record, I don’t think he really dug it too much. He was just not cool with it.”
In a gallant attempt to weasel out of the agreement, Warren avoided the band’s calls and started peddling the tape to other label owners in the States. As it turned out, one of the execs he contacted was Jim Ramsweiller, whose Los Angeles-based label, Scooch Pooch, is best known in these parts as the home of Denver’s LaDonnas. Ramsweiller took an immediate liking to the Hookers and signed them to a contract.
Thus far, the deal has worked out better than Neal and his cohorts expected. The vinyl pressings of the record have already sold out, and early tallies indicate that the CD should do equally well. The band is also in the midst of its first U.S. tour, which includes dates with labelmates the Fumes and the aforementioned LaDonnas. Neal, for one, is anxious to find out what kind of audience the band will attract. “For some reason, the garage rockers seem to like us,” he notes. “Which I don’t understand at all, because we really don’t play to that at all.”
Who do the Hookers play to? “Just come and see us,” Neal urges. “It’ll be a pretty crazy show. I think you’ll leave feeling pretty disturbed.”
The Hookers, with the LaDonnas and Negative Man. 9 p.m. Tuesday, June 9, 15th Street Tavern, 623 15th Street, $5, 572-0822.
