Hammok - When Does This Place Become Our Scene Hammok

Hammok were far from home and yet had finally found where they belonged. Somewhere in the middle of Europe, vocalist/guitarist Tobias Osland began writing a new song, reflecting on the international hardcore communities that had embraced the band with open arms. He and his bandmates — drummer Ferdinand Aasheim and bassist Ole Benjamin Thomassen — were overwhelmed, stepping out from Oslo’s small, tight-knit alternative circles and meeting fans across the continent. Osland carried this new song with him on the road, titling it “The Scene” as he sang: “When does a space become a scene, when does this place become our scene.” He immediately knew it would become the title of Hammok’s new album. When Does This Place Become Our Scene, the trio’s sophomore outing and first release for Sargent House, captures three musicians who once felt outside looking in — now stepping fully into their own.

Osland and Aasheim first cut their teeth together as pre-teens playing pop-punk and hanging out at a skatepark in their hometown an hour outside Oslo. They were in and out of other projects, eventually meeting Thomassen in a band that collapsed around the pandemic. Just before lockdown, and now in their 20s, the three moved in together, and spent their time in isolation launching Hammok as we now know it. While live shows are usually paramount for bands in heavy music, Hammok didn’t have the option to perform in public. They learned how to be a band together by writing and recording, yielding a new sense of adventurousness in their music. “You begin to think sonically, in layers and production, instead of in breakdowns that will make people mosh and go crazy,” Osland explains. On When Does This Place Become Our Scene, their idiosyncratic blend of pop production, the vivacious energy of hardcore, and experimental textures fully blossoms, placing them on the vanguard of forward-thinking punk.

Most of the songs arrived fast in an inspired burst, but the recording was laborious, with Osland calling the production efforts “the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.” Armed with a set of impressive demos and tasked with refining and expanding their sound, Hammok tweaked and explored until they arrived at something that held all their impulses at once — volatile, hook-driven, and dense with detail. They pushed their noise-rock, hardcore and metal foundations into broader, more dynamic territory weaving industrial abrasion, hip-hop pulse, synth textures, and progressive turns into classic punk urgency. Lyrically, When Does This Place Become Our Scene grapples with existing in hardcore’s lineage and social politics, but also broader paradigms, like coming of age in an era shaped by hyperconnection and digital life. In balancing the polarities of underground intensity and pop sensibility, they arrived at an album equal parts scream-along cathartic and nod-along infectious.

To Hammok, the twists and turns cohere into a journey, a process of reaching out further for connection. “A central idea was: What does it mean to be alone?” Osland says. “Is it a strength? Do you feel a part of something? A community?” When Does This Place Become Our Scene is an invitation — the sound of a band pouring all of themselves into this new music, promising an audience that this communication, this back and forth, is a worthwhile exchange.