"Despite Amputations" (1983) Album Description:

"Despite Amputations" is the only proper document Hack Hack left behind, and it wears 1983 London like a damp coat you can’t quite shake off. Six tracks, one 12" mini-LP on Shout (MX 002), released 15 July 1983 if you want the calendar pinned down. The title doesn’t wink. The band name doesn’t wink. Nothing here is trying to make you comfortable.

West London gave them the attitude (Ladbroke Grove, 1982–1983). North London gave them the room: Decibel Studios in Stoke Newington, with Graeme Holdaway handling the recording side of things. That split matters. You can hear it. Street-level bite, then a studio space that lets the edges stay sharp instead of smearing into mush.

Britain in ’83 felt like it had two soundtracks running at once. Bright pop on the telly, and then—down the stairs, past the sticky floor—the stuff that actually matched the mood. Post-punk wasn’t “evolving,” it was mutating. The bands that survived did it by getting stranger, colder, funnier, or meaner. Hack Hack pick “meaner,” but not in a macho way. More like: irritated, sleepless, unimpressed.

Genre-wise, they sit in that seam where post-punk starts brushing goth rock without doing the full costume change. The Cure had started cutting deeper, Siouxsie and the Banshees could freeze a room on command, Bauhaus turned dread into theatre, Killing Joke hit like machinery, and UK Decay proved melody could still crawl out of the mud. Hack Hack aren’t any of those bands. They just share the same night air and a similar distrust of softness.

The line-up is straightforward and a bit revealing: Wayne Charlton (vocals), Matthew Stokoe (guitar), Mark Whitely (bass and piano), Alan Cole (drums). Bass plus piano is the tell. That’s not a “let’s jam” detail. That’s someone wanting the harmony to feel slightly wrong, slightly boxed-in, like the room got smaller while you weren’t looking.

How it moves, track by track
  • Side One: "Monster Ash-Tray Man", "Chambermaid", "Door Slam"
  • Side Two: "Ride A Horse", "Run In To Me", "Hymn For The Discontented"

"Monster Ash-Tray Man" comes in with a clipped kind of aggression—no big intro, no handshake. The guitar doesn’t “ring,” it scrapes. Drums keep it upright, almost stubbornly plain, like decoration would be an insult. Charlton’s vocal sits on top as attitude, not as melody. Good. Melody would have softened the punch.

"Chambermaid" and "Door Slam" are where the record earns its keep. The spaces matter. The stops feel intentional, like they’re letting you hear the room for a second and then slamming it shut again. There’s tension in that discipline—less “tight playing” and more “tight jaw.”

Side Two messes with you. "Ride A Horse" looks like a joke on paper, then refuses to behave like one. "Run In To Me" pushes forward with the closest thing this record has to a direct stare. Then "Hymn For The Discontented" closes like a complaint letter that’s been folded and unfolded too many times—creases everywhere, patience gone.

Credits that actually matter: recorded at Decibel; Graeme Holdaway on the engineering/recording side. The production credit here is "NG"—which reads like either an alias, initials, or somebody opting out of being remembered. Fine. The sound itself feels like the priority was capturing bite and claustrophobia, not chasing “big” drums or polite separation.

No dependable controversies trail this release. The bigger problem is the boring one: name confusion. “Hack Hack” is the kind of name that gets reused, mis-filed, and mis-Googled into nonsense. This one is Ladbroke Grove, 1982–1983, one official mini-LP, and then silence. Sometimes silence is the point.

A quiet anchor: this is exactly the record you spot half-hidden in a shop bin late in the day, when the owner’s already tired and the heaters don’t work properly. You hesitate at the title for half a second, then you buy it anyway—because the best records don’t ask nicely.

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