Album Reviews

- by Tom Dumarey

Oakland’s The Hammerbombs have followed up on their debut EP with ‘Goodbye, Dreamboat,’ their first full-length. It comes with a dozen songs worth of melodic punk of the East Bay variety.

Overall, this is pretty enjoyable. Sure, some parts feel a little too rough around the edges for their own good and I’m not too fond of lines being repeated over and over like in ‘I Hate Cars’ where the chorus consists of nothing more than the line ‘sometimes i hate your car / cause it just takes you away from me’.

But those are things that can be remedied easily enough on future releases. What’s more important is the fact that songs like ‘Full Of Shit’ and ‘Things Aren’t Going Well’ are the type of beer-soaked party anthems that are easy to sing along to (that’s where the repetition pays off). They are short, catchy, kinda snarky and just sloppy enough to be considered charming. Plus the male/female vocals add variation where needed and are backed up by all the necessary woah’s.

‘Goodbye, Dreamboat’ probably won’t be winning any Album of the Year Awards but after a shitty day at work, singing ‘Mother Mother Fucker Fucker’ right along with the band while nursing a cold beer definitely felt alright.

Track listing:

1. Shower Beer    
2. I Hate Cars    
3. Cypress Structure    
4. Full Of Shit    
5. Sick Of Me    
6. Donezos    
7. Things Aren't Going Well
8. tiny    
9. Mother Mother Fucker Fucker    
10. Stupid Love Songs    
11. Drowning, Not Waving    
12. You Stole My Miami Vice