Funk, Art Rock, and Post-Punk Collide on Eel Men’s Glass Hammers
North London four-piece Eel Men released Glass Hammers, a self-released 10″ EP, on 15 May 2026. The record follows their 2025 debut album Stop It! Do Something. A London show at The Social is scheduled for 22 May, with a European tour running from 29 May to 20 June.
Artist: Eel Men
Release Date: 2026-05-15
Genres: Art Rock, Garage Rock, Post-punk
Label: self-release
Description: Eel Men release Glass Hammers, a self-released 10" EP out 15 May 2026, recorded live to tape in Hackney Wick. Post-punk meets funk and art rock.
Recording took place live to tape at Gizzard Studios in Hackney Wick, engineered by Ed Deegan. Analogue limitations were imposed deliberately, with the band prioritising performance capture over correction.
Where the debut leaned on tight, angular guitar work and compressed rhythms, Glass Hammers shifts toward a looser, more rhythm-driven approach, with funk and experimental pop sitting alongside art rock in the mix. The result is a set of songs built around internal contrast: controlled against loose, polished against rough.
The title track grew out of a rehearsal room idea and builds wiry guitar lines over a bass-and-drum-led foundation. Its lyrical focus is what the band call a “decline in human competence,” a state of too many options and too little follow-through. “When I Get Rich” takes a different angle on a related subject: the persistent belief that financial gain will eventually resolve the underlying disorder of daily life. Vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Elliott has described this as a near-universal pattern of thinking that tends, on examination, not to hold up.
The band frame the EP’s overall tone as poised between comedy and bleakness, the moment after something goes wrong when the response is still undecided.
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