*** 8-Ball Shifter

HANSON

(Clamarama)

Hanson is a garage-punk racket from the Crypt Records school of no-fi lowbrow raunch. It's gloomy vampire moonscapes beamed back from Planet Sad-O-Rotica; mutated Estrus/Dionysus labels' sci-fi surf throttled direct from a secluded "Haunted Beach" simmering somewhere south of Heaven; blackhearted voodoo-drum frenzy and mondo atomic guitar squall from the same graveyard that spit forth George Romero, EC Comics, and the Misfits. Local poster artist and trash-culture fiend Ian Adams, howling like a goresucker caught out after daybreak, serves up a psychotronic sleazefest populated with white-trash serial thrill-killers, Stooges-esque runaway sons of the A-Bomb, and more monster babes than you can shake a flamethrower at. Serenading sexploitation starlet Tura Satana (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!; The Astro Zombies), chasing after blood on a school night with "Dracula's Daughter," and getting wrapped up in the love of an eight-armed She-Beast from "Nekron '69," 8-Ball Shifter are the best thing to happen to the Boston garage scene since the Cheater Slicks blew town.

-- Carly Carioli

(8-Ball Shifter play the Middle East upstairs tonight, January 23.)