Hammerhead: A band that helped define ‘90s noise is ‘Back with a Future’

By Phil Hunt

*Adult language advisory

It’s possibly a couple years shy of a quarter-century since the Hammerhead song “Gremlin Stomp” appeared on the seminal Minneapolis noise rock label Amphetamine Reptile’s “Dope-Guns-N-Fucking In The Streets Volume 6.” This probably happened around the time that Hammerhead left the city of Fargo, N.D., if not after.

Still, if you Google “Hammerhead Fargo,” you will get about 350,000 results. That’s still quite a few, even after you take Hammerhead Freestyle Wrestling and message board comments from Fargo-based Avengers fans into account. “Hammerhead Minneapolis” only yields 429,000 pages, and they’ve got the Sea Life Aquarium at Mall of America.

“It's amusing to me that our Midwestern roots are interesting in any context. A lot of musicians and artists come from nowhere towns like Fargo,” says Paul Sanders, the guitar player for the storied noise-rock band that caused Fargo-Moorhead to erupt into a 1990s punk scene filled with heavily distorted facsimile bands, none of which could quite match the power or success of the original. “It's necessary to have some time to figure things out, far from the possibility of a limelight, when you're just starting. For us, it helped distill our approach.”

It’s cool that Hammerhead has never forgot how much Fargo loves one of its most-famous, and now longest-lived, indie rock exports. The band has always put Fargo on its tour itineraries, and this Friday night they’re putting one more on the books. The group will be at the Aquarium, playing in the same room where Paul Sanders first performed with bassist Paul Erickson and drummer Jeff Mooridian Jr. in the 1980s.

Though Hammerhead has been pleasurably harshing the buzz of music fans for quite some time, the group’s latest chapter is fairly recent. The band split up after it released “Duh, The Big City” in 1996. It stayed dormant for 14 years, until the Amphetamine Reptile 25th Anniversary Bash at Grumpy’s in Minneapolis.

“I wanted to have a career and make money for a while like a normal person,” Sanders said about his departure. “I started by quitting the band and going to college. What a fucking mistake. Hammerhead toured in about 20 different countries in Europe, every state in the continental USA and we were talking about going to Japan. Instead, I took out student loans, had to work in a cubicle for longer than I want to admit and didn't go on a real vacation for nearly 10 years.”

Even if it was a mistake, the fact that it’s being rectified today is good news for people who never thought another Hammerhead live show was in the cards. “There's more excitement around the band now, for some reason,” Sanders remarked. “Since we've reunified, every show we play in Minneapolis seems bigger than the previous one, filled with smarter and more attractive people.”

Hammerhead isn’t just playing the hits for old fans. The band released a tour and digital-download-EP called “Memory Hole” in 2011, and it just released “Global Depression,” a 12” EP on Learning Curve Records. The new material sounds a little more mature, but still as fierce as anything they’ve ever done. The band also released a great video for the song “Like A Wizard.” The video was produced in partnership with the Seawhores, another Fargo-to-Minneapolis noise transplant.

“We never wanted to just do a reunion. That implies sentimentality, and playing the old songs for old time's sake,” Sanders said. “Fuck the old times. We only wanted to get back together if we could move the band forward, which I think we've done.”

Though Hammerhead seems to be charging on as hard as it ever did, they’re realistic about the inevitability of a second conclusion. “We're in our 40s now. How long can we play at this level? Can we keep it interesting for us? Will people keep following us if we push things further than we did in the past? Can the body sustain much more of the physical punishment it takes to play live like we do? I don't know. We'll see.”

IF YOU GO:

Hammerhead with SOTOS and The Statmods

Fri, Sept 5, 10 p.m.

The Aquarium, 226 Broadway

$10 @ ticketweb.com

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