Hammerhead

Power and raw force marked the style of post-punk hard rock trio Hammerhead, a name that might easily have shifted to “Sledgehammer” had an English heavy metal act not already claimed it. Paul Sanders on vocals and guitar joined Paul Erickson on vocals and bass along with drummer Jeff Mooridian Jr. to launch the band in Fargo, ND, near 1990 before shifting operations to Minneapolis, MN, several years afterward. Every release appeared on the Minneapolis-based Amphetamine Reptile label. The group drew inspiration from Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle for its loud, dark, rhythmic attack, while listeners linked the sound to the terse prose of hardboiled writers Jim Thompson and James M. Cain as well as the brain-pounding noise rock of Unsane, Surgery, and Bastro.

The first vinyl outing arrived as the 1991 picture-disc single Peep, whose artwork came from ex-Replacement Chris Mars. A gray-vinyl, tour-only single titled Load King followed in 1992, then the live, tour-only single Evil Twin in 1993. Still based in Fargo, the trio cut its debut full-length, Ethereal Killer, that same year. The Evil Twin EP soon collected the four tracks from the prior 7", added two cuts from the picture disc, and included a fresh take on “Load King”; it first appeared as a yellow-vinyl 10". By the release of 1994’s Into the Vortex the band had settled in Minneapolis, tightening its driving, minimalist approach without softening its edge and granting lyrics greater weight. Taxi Driver echoes surfaced in lines such as “Someone should clean this dirty world/someone should save the pretty girls” from “All This Is Yours” and “The rain came down/blood soaked the streets” from “Brest.”

Many listeners, whose numbers have only grown since the group disbanded, regard 1996’s Duh, the Big City as the definitive statement. That album proved to be the final full-length, succeeded solely by the tour-only single Earth (I Won’t Miss). Sanders departed in 1995, signaling the close; replacement guitarists were tried without lasting success. He later started more RAM, a project that eventually ended, while Erickson, performing as Apollo Liftoff, teamed with Mooridian Jr. to form Vaz.