"HAZMAT MODINE: …this wild group led by the singer and harmonica player Wade Schuman. They play blues originals, mostly, that are the product of Schuman’s limitless imagination. His voice, for that matter, appears to be bottomless."

- The New Yorker

“They’re a calypso/alt-country/blues/gypsy band…. which is obviously what the world needs most…”

- Times of London

"Seems like ages since harmonicas have sounded as hep as Wade Schuman’s and Randy Weinstein’s do in this hand-painted confab of rusty blues, piquant rumbas, sawdust-floor reggae, Hawaiian guitar, and—sure, why not?—Tuvan throat singing. Welcome to the old weird globalism."

- Richard Gehr - The Village Voice

"The singer and harmonica player Wade Schuman's musical vision sounds like something out of Dr. Suess. His group augments Mr. Schumans own avant-blues stylings with a contra-bass, a banjitar, tuba, flugel, trumpet, sheng and, most important, Tuvan throat singing. "

- Sinagra - The New York Times

“A truly mysterious band about which the only sure thing to say is this: It is extremely New York. Only in that huge metropolis can collectives like this blossom and grow and could invent such an amazing combination of music based out of so many genres…”

- TimeOut Moscow, Russia

"One of New York’s most original bands…With their sly musical wit, expert musicianship and completely unique sound, HAZMAT MODINE has built a wide and devoted following, drawing crowds to shows at venues as diverse as the Knitting Factory, Terra Blues, the Fez, Satalla, Joe's Pub, Barbes and Galapagos Art Space."

- Alan Young - Trifecta, NYC

"From the moment he stepped out onto the tiny Joe's Pub stage tonight, Wade Schuman wasted no time in asserting his credentials as a musician to be reckoned with. Pulling out a harmonica, Schuman played an unaccompanied solo of stunning imagination and skill. He made the tiny instrument sing and growl; he blew multiphonic lines punctuated by sharp, percussive pops. During one stretch, he created a doppler-like effect; the closest comparison I could make would be a speeding train winding through a hilly countryside, the sound shuttered by trees and swallowed by the occasional tunnel."

- Steve Smith of TimeOut New York- Night After Night

“…But the most striking was the third part of this "New York Night", dedicated to HAZMAT MODINE led by a supreme harmonica virtuoso, singer, Wade Schuman…the main thing about this band was: genuine joy of every musician. Schuman himself…literally screamed from delight listening to other people's solos. The band, supposed to play forty minutes or so, gave to a grateful audience a encore gift of an extra hour of its time, note that they came on stage at one in the morning!”

- Grigory Durnovo – Gazeta, Russia

“…One of the most unusual bands of New York.…All the musicians in the band are virtuosos well known to the artistic millue of New York. But they're virtuosos with an excellent sense of humor and a fantastic stage drive. Leading this unique collective is Wade Schuman – composer, guitarist, and singer, but most importantly (as everyone who saw Hazmat Modine live claims) the best harmonica player in the world. The guitarists churned out unreal solos, the trumpet and the tuba created wonders, and the audience went wild and stayed wild until the end of the show…the last time I saw such a rapport between the musicians and the audience was a very long time ago. It was a full-blown triumph.”

- Zvuki – Moscow, Russia

“…What they did with it! How did they do it? What was that?!? I have never seen anything like it… After the fifth song I felt an urgent need to scream…Glancing at the audience, I saw totally wild dancing! What was happening in there? The subway had long been closed by then. Somebody next to me said, “It is worth spending a night in the park to be here!” An hour in paradise, an hour of screaming and insane dancing, An hour in the clouds, An hour when the demonic blues of the New York underground beats into your temple, blood pumping in the veins, My brain refused to understand anything else. And in my head only one thought: …Where are you New York??? I was about to cry again…I never heard anything like it…”

- From a Russian Blog about HAZMAT MODINE at the GOLDEN MASK FESTIVAL, Moscow, Russia, 2006

"HAZMAT MODINE plays the kind of Blues one might have found in a whorehouse in New Orleans had the city been built on the Black Sea somewhere alongside Macao and inhabited by Gypsies…Wade Schuman has the appropriately throaty voice of someone who has both hopped freight trains and collaborated with the Throat Singers of Tuva (really...). "   

- Olivier Conan - Barbès, NYC

“Music straight of New York’s ethno-underground…Bahamut: Right now, this is the song that I can’t get enough of, the one I have to listen to several times a day, a song I wish I’d written…It's as if 1930's calypso legend Wilmouth Houdini, Sidney Bechet and a Haitian band all ran into each other at a Gypsy wedding where Fanfare Ciocarlia were rocking some Balkan brass... "

- Sophie Solomon - Metro News, London

BAHAMUT CD PRESS

This long-awaited debut CD is a uniquely intercontinental sonic collage encompassing a tremendous range of instrumental, vocal, and conceptual originality--all with a lot of soul and groove. Like the mythological beast of its title track, HAZMAT Modine's BAHAMUT holds the world in it's eye. Its fourteen songs are steeped deep in American roots but merge influences as diverse as Romanian brass, Middle Eastern fable, Jamaican Calypso, and Tuvan-Mongolian ballad…

“…HAZMAT MODINE is surely one of the most remarkable musical groups that has made one of the most remarkable records I’ve ever heard…My ears turned inside out in every direction to hear all of it. What fantastic music!”

- Bengt Eriksson – Roots, Denmark

“…Leader Wade Schuman is a fellow traveler, one who's cashed in an unusually high number of frequent-flier miles pursuing his mojo. A dizzying harmonica player (check out his solo feature, "Lost Fox Train") and soulful guitarist, Schuman steers a combo whose members have punched the clock in jazz, Latin, klezmer and Hawaiian-swing groups. No doubt that's why Hazmat Modine sounds so comfortable crunching styles ranging from ska to Balkan brass raves and beyond, not to mention jamming with Tuvan overtone singers Huun-Huur-Tu on three tracks. Bahamut is thick with ear-tickling arrangements, such as the two harmonicas, two tubas, bass saxophone, Hawaiian steel guitar and cimbalom of "Who Walks in When I Walk Out?" Schuman's winningly gruff vocals are well suited to a bluesman's typically put-upon malaise. He also has a knack for turning a poetic phrase, as in "Dry Spell" ("You say that you're so thirsty / You'd even drink my tears"). The disc is liberally soaked in whimsy, nowhere more so than on the title track: Even gargantuan fish gods of ancient lore get the blues, it seems."                                                                                                
- Steve Smith - TimeOut New York

“...Dazzling also seems an appropriate adjective for this wildly eclectic NYC band. At first blush, HAZMAT MODINE is a blues band: harmonicas, resonator/slide guitars, drums, some horns. But then there's the throat singing (of Huun Huur Tu) and Alexander Fedoriouk's cimbalom. A disorienting moment later, you settle into a mysterious undiscovered country, a crossroad where the collision of Tuvan, Roma, and Americana not only makes sense, it's inevitable. Imagine a plane carrying the Squrrel Nut Zippers and Bob Brozman crashing among a troupe of Roma encamped on the Tuvan steppe, and you'll start to get the idea. It's world music for blues/swing fans, Americana for world music junkies, and just damn good.…”

- Scott Stevens - SOUND ROOTS, U.S.

"HAZMAT MODINE’s newly issued Bahamut (Barbes/Geckophonic) provides a winning showcase for a harmonica-fronted, brass heavy band that mines an exotic blues from the farthest reaches of the planet."       

- TimeOut New York

"…Saying that it’s hard to define a musical genre for Bahamut would be a grave understatement. In fact that is, to me, one of it’s endearing qualities. Bahamut is a world music album in the best sense of the word: it draws inspiration from varied musical traditions around the world and blends them in a coherent and unique sound.... The breadth and variety of instrumentation and arrangements in Bahamut is astounding...."

- Ben Felton - Planet Harmonica, France

“It lives and moves! Finding this CD was like stepping through a looking glass into a strange new world where the blues is a vital art form, world music has a beat, pop is interesting, jug bands have something to say, and the harmonica is an expressive musical instrument. I'm there, I'm listening and looking around, and I just can't believe it's real - but it must be, because I keep playing it, again and again. Lots of folks commenting on the many and eclectic influences of this new CD and it's all true and clever but it is just more than the sum of its parts. May God and Wilson Pickett forgive me for saying so, but this CD has . . . soul. It really has a real soul that lives and breathes and makes about a dozen crappy tired genres wake up, hug each other and dance. They dance together for the first time, and I suspect right now they are out having sex somewhere. I just hope they have kids.”

- Larry Rapoport of Eatingaway

“Equally good as ecstatic party record and headphone album, Bahamut is a lock for best full-length debut of 2006... It'll be hard for anybody to beat the wild, dyonisian fun, spectacular musicianship and off-the-wall psychedelic outrageousness that frontman Wade Schuman and his army of cohorts have come up with here. HAZMAT MODINE’s sprawling, rustic, frequently hypnotic improvisational style defies categorization…If the Coen brothers ever made a Prohibition-era movie, Hazmat Modine would be the ideal band to do the soundtrack. This album is something akin to Sergeant Pepper played by gypsies, right down to its bizarre between-song samples and brief instrumental interludes that pop up unexpectedly. The songs on this CD swing and slink through an amber half-light, like some 19th century medium lit up with a wormwood grin on the way to a triumphant post-seance bash.”

- TRIFECTAGRAM Choice Pick: Bahamut

“Wow. The hair on the back of my neck rises up every time I hear the title track. To try and classify this album under a handy-hyphenated genre name is to do it a disservice... Vocals that go from sweet and playful, to possessed and howling, with lyrics that are enchanted... the comfortable and familiar blended with sounds that fell from the moon. An album that's reminiscent of favorites from your past, but is closer to that thing you thought you saw once, heard once, so long ago - - or did you just imagine it? - And how does it pull off being so goofy and hot and fun, and strike me as being so spiritual? I hear tons of different, eclectic, unusual music all the time, vintage and new, from all over the map, and I want you to know that you need to hear this album. Honest.”

- Frank Mallis  - WFM KALX Radio