Musical trends may come and go, but the Hangmen keep moving forward heedlessly with the headlong momentum of a runaway train. The quartet’s new album on Acetate Records, Stories To Tell (released in September 2023), smashes together lead singer Bryan Small’s lurid love songs with unsparing, unsentimental blasts that shine a baleful and penetrating light into the dark and seedy corners of modern- day Los Angeles.
The Hangmen have always been a unique group that can’t be easily pigeonholed, and East of Western captures all of their different sides. When they first got together in L.A. in 1987, the Hangmen were fiery and hard rocking enough to play with metal bands, but they also had a stubbornly rootsy and punk rock attitude that made them fit in just as easily with such legendary underground icons as the Gun Club and Tex & the Horseheads. Their trademark dual-guitar attack combines the classic-rock drive of the Rolling Stones and AC/DC with the hard-charging swagger of Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers and the sinister allure of the Cramps.
Over the years, the Hangmen have worked with several notable producers, including Vic Maile (Motorhead, The Inmates, Hawkind), who recorded the Hangmen’s self-titled Capitol Records full-length LP in 1989, which is now a prized collector’s item. (Good luck finding that one on eBay!) Radio Birdman singer Rob Younger helmed the group’s lost second album, which was commissioned by Geffen Records but never released and is now an even greater rarity.
