After listening to records of lesser quality, Hammertorch’s This Hammer Fell From the Sky felt like finding a soft pillow after having to sleep on rocks for a week.

The music is rock ’n’ roll. It is straight forward with a little bit of an interesting twist that comes from a unique front vocal and very solid harmonies. It’s not flashy, just basic rock ’n’ roll.

The instruments have the vintage feel and tones of classic rock with only a slight modern edge. The songwriting is interesting. The first song “Murfreesboro Motel,” definitely caught my ear with a good chorus and strong melodic content. Hammertorch immediately struck me as a band who plays well together.

As the album went on, I was extremely impressed by “Flat Tire,” which has a Neil Young kind of groove and just feels good. I could listen to stuff like that all day.

What I didn’t like about the album is that it seems to lack musical content (the album is very short). The few songs on the album are spaced by instrumental tracks that seem to go on with unnecessary extended repetitions. Some of the instrumentals feel overly dramatic and serve very little purpose where they sit in the album. I like that they did this sort of thing, but I felt the instrumentals might have been more appropriate as intros or exits for other songs, rather than stand alone tracks. Maybe, if there were more complete songs, they could have spaced the instrumentals out more, and they would have been fine.

Overall This Hammer Fell From the Sky is not bad, but not amazing. It was short enough that it didn’t get old, and long enough that it gave me a taste of the band’s style.

I wish that taste could have been turned into a full meal, but if the band keeps writing good songs, I’d be interested in hearing a lot more.

Also, they should keep up the good work on the vocal harmonies. Their harmonies are a distinguishing characteristic that sound absolutely great.