Hangnail
Ten Days Before Summer

The Hangnail, Englishmen with a penchant for fuzz-toned, doomy, and bluesy Iommi-style guitar riffs, trust me, they know what they're doing...

They tear to shreds what's left of your memory devastated by alcohol drought and numbed by cigarettes laced with incredibly catchy riffs, they can lull you and then destroy you... They tell you... This jeep has an airbag and roars ferociously over the worst desert as if it were butter,  snickering shortly after, knowing that in this heat and with this trip on you, it won't help you one bit! You'll be catapulted out of the vehicle before the impact, crashing against a beautiful ancient dune, waiting for you alongside a nice crate of beer!!!

These crazy guys started playing for fun between sips in college and went for it, enjoying themselves but God, how much fury, how much love for the seventies, and how much adrenaline-fueled mix... This "Ten Days Before Summer", their first full-length released under the aegis of Rise Above Records in 1999, presents itself as a crescendo, an unstoppable and unpredictable vortex of sonic and psychedelic waves cleverly mixed by the celebrated Armstrong/Ogawa duo along with catchy elements typically middle-eastern and seventies reminiscences... beware!

The risk of being tossed out together with your beer is more than real... So get on that jeep and at full throttle... Overhang is nothing more than a gigantic fuzz hammer inside your brain... Press press while the acid and alcohol boil inside you... A loop diluted judiciously within a sick and parasitic groove... Then a tear, a scorching blade... The first real trip starts with Side/slide, a kind of enchanting and heartbreaking lysergic dance that nervously and sinuously floats between the vocal trills of Katty Heach before concluding with a series of precise and inescapable hammer blows, making even the worst serial killer envious...

The devastating heat rises and you feel the sand tattooed on you while the speedometer is literally going crazy... A sick sun disturbs your face... It's the acoustic riff of Keep on of Led Zeppelin memory that cradles you before giving you yet another kick in the ass, the umpteenth adrenaline shock that soon liquefies, first oily, then granite-like, melting into visceral wha... A few more engine thunders, and it's time to set off for another mini-trip that roasts the guts: it's time for Summer Rain, winking with its desperate and desolate wha solo, while a mischievous and dreamy arpeggio envelops and kidnaps you after collapsing under yet another sonic outburst in Visit my World and still seismic shocks under your ass, this damn desert is giving you sores but you're good and at peace with the world... Hair in the wind and beer in the stomach...

Your veins swell with steaming energy until they burst while foot on the accelerator you let yourself be kidnapped by the raw psychogrunge and rockabilly grace of Sun Quake with the Elphnick/Cronin duo on shields, before abandoning yourself to the dreamy liquid delirium embellished by the ethereal whispers of Katty Heach in 0.1861111111 (never was a guest more fitting indeed!)... Watch out that over there looks like a boulder! A diabolical smile at the corner of your mouth illuminates your face now sculpted by sand and beer gulped down by the rivers between one skid and another... You couldn't care less so abrupt acceleration... Here is the bewildering heavy stoner beauty of One Million Layers B.C. with a damn catchy bluesy solo... By now you're very close to breaking your neck and the impact is inevitable... bang!

Here you are with your face in the sand of that dune... While disoriented in the psychosonic hell of Charge the Vibe with an extremely acid psychedelic finale reminiscent of Moon turn the tides gently gently away of Hendrixian memory, you wonder what happened to the beer... The one promised at the beginning... Surely it can't be a hoax??? Ah no! Here it is! Luckily!!! At least another sip... Before the journey starts again...

See Ya!