When Does This Place Become Our Scene by Hammok (Review)

Given that Norway consistently ranks as one of the world’s happiest countries — it sure must be nice to have a functional social welfare net — you wonder if they can possibly be angry enough to have a punk/hardcore scene. And then you hear Hammok’s blistering When Does This Place Become Our Scene, and you realize that alienation, unrest, and dissatisfaction will always transcend any world happiness index. And thankfully, there will always be young punks ready to shove that truth into our faces.

Just as Turnstile challenged people’s notions of what hardcore can or should be with last year’s Grammy-winning Never Enough, the Norwegian trio do their own part to explode the genre’s tropes. While they cite Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs as influences, Hammok certainly aren’t afraid to render songs like “BANG” and “Groundbreaker” as brutalist slabs of noise akin to something you’d expect from a Ben Frost album.

But even on the album’s more, dare I say, accessible moments, like opening single “The Scene,” vocalist/guitarist Tobias Osland and his bandmates still redline their instruments until everything bleeds together in an ear-piercing glory. Meanwhile, Osland sings/screams/wails about the universal search for identity and belonging: “I’d like to know I’m not the only one/I’d like to grow a place of green/When does a space become a scene?/When does this place become our scene?”

“Gooning For Free” eviscerates the internet-driven attention cycles that encourage people to sell their bodies and souls on OnlyFans and social media. “I can be a pimp and put my face on the screen/Screaming would you pay for me,” shrieks Osland against pummeling industrial rhythms before identifying the ethos of the era — “Be outrageous!” — as his voice sounds like it’s slowly being consumed by a capitalist hell. Similarly, “Tap Water” tackles the numbness of modernity (“How can I set myself on fire if nothing is sacred anymore?”) as it veers from jagged riffs to droning interludes to more of the band’s well-honed tumult.

When Does This Place Become Our Scene isn’t all doom and gloom, though. “When the Kids Are Too Old to Cause a Scene” is a heartfelt examination of Norway’s hardcore scene and Hammok’s place in it while “For My Friends” ends the album with a triumphant celebration of community. Whatever topic the band might be tackling, though, they do it with complete and total abandon, throwing themselves — and their instruments — headlong into the very maelstrom that they’ve whipped up.

I’m sure that some old heads will frown at the term “hardcore” being attached to When Does This Place Become Our Scene, but if Hammok’s bracing onslaught isn’t hardcore, then I don’t know what is.

When Does This Place Become Our Scene is currently available from Sargent House.