Now here’s an interesting little item, speaking of Midwestern USPM obscurities that could be considered ‘arcane’… Although each of the members of Hammeron seem to have been involved with better-known, more extreme metal bands in and around Chicago in their careers (Znöwhite, Sindrome, Ministry, Damien Thorne), Nothin’ to Do but Rock is a pretty straightforward US power metal album which leans more toward the melodic side than toward the aggressive side, despite the band logo and imagery suggesting otherwise.
The lyrical themes on Nothin’ to Do but Rock are a bit, shall we say, on-the-nose. They alternate between love won and love lost, fulfilment and abandonment, togetherness and loneliness. Themes of ‘girls who done me wrong’ and ‘girls I can’t forget’ form the overwhelming bulk of the album, from ‘So True’ all the way through ‘Sleepwalker’. And also, not that these are out of place on any eighties metal album: but you also have your stand up, fight back and get your revenge song in ‘Silent Victim’; and a free-wheeling rock-‘n’-roll life on the road song in ‘Nothin’ to Do but Rock’.
The most variety in lyrical content on the album comes with the penultimate ‘Sands of Fyre’, which goes all in for low-fantasy themes of epic warfare, maidens and desert magick, and instrumentally brings a portentiously dark, minor-key Near Eastern melody to bear, carried by the keyboards and rhythm guitar. Actually, the album does close very strong with ‘Sands of Fyre’: that’s the true highlight of the album overall, having an interesting and even near-progressive composition, edging very close to what one would expect from a contemporary epic metal band like Cirith Ungol.
The biggest problem with Nothin’ to Do but Rock is that a lot of it just sort of tends to glide over the ear, even after seven or eight listens-through. The guitarwork and drums are solid and powerful, but the song compositions are overwhelmingly mid-tempo, workaday pieces, pleasant but unmemorable, that tend to blend together. At his best here, Brian Troch can emulate a Dio-like power in his vocal delivery, but tends to lack Ronnie’s sheer consistency and conviction. His best performance in terms of vocals are the soaring wails of ‘I’m just asleep for now’ on ‘Sleepwalker’. I will say this about Hammeron: Troch’s singing did make me want to check out Znöwhite and Cyclone Temple, to see what he could do with a bit speedier accompaniment.
In fact, Nothin’ to Do tends toward the middle of the road in a number of ways, stylistically. Not having the sheer attack power of a Jag Panzer or an Agent Steel, and not having the high-concept dystopian SFnal stylings of an early Queensrÿche, the mythic operatic bombast of a Savatage, or the atompunk galactic-scale ambitions of an Heir Apparent… sadly leaves Hammeron pretty firmly in the second tier where early American power metal is concerned. Still, for second-tier USPM, I know you could do far worse than this album.
Nothin’ to Do but Rock is one of those albums that you can put on at any time of day and listen to easily. It’s enjoyable but it doesn’t leave a particularly deep impression. It’s genial. It’s down-home. It’s inoffensive. It’s road trip music. The name of the album is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it’s literally music that you can pop on when you have nothing else to do, but – hey! – feel like listening to rock.
14 / 20