Heavy - Heavy - HURT & THE MERCILESS [Vinyl]
Barcode: 075597947014

Bath, England outfit the Heavy have built a career out of making insanely raw and soulful music that blends shoot-from-the-hip garage rock intensity with an ear for tuneful, '60s R&B melodicism. The group's fourth studio album, 2016's Hurt & the Merciless, finds the band digging even deeper into its bloodshot-eyed aesthetic. Still showcasing the throaty renegade vocals of frontman Kelvin Swaby, the Heavy churn through track after track of aggressive, ball-busting anthems. Following up 2012's The Glorious Dead, Hurt & the Merciless is yet another self-produced effort that purportedly found the bandmembers revisiting their early demos for inspiration. If getting a live, rough demo energy was the goal, then the Heavy have succeeded. While the album never sounds lo-fi, the production nonetheless has the taut, confrontational energy of a basement punk show or old-school juke-joint performance. Cuts like "Since You Been Gone," "The Apology," and "Turn Up" hum with crispy, fuzzed-out electric guitars, diamond-tipped backing vocals, and horns that blare as if pumped out of blown-out car speakers. Similarly, cuts like the frenetic "What Happened to the Love?" and "Slave to Your Love" sound something like the MC5 doing Little Richard covers. Elsewhere, the Heavy rein things in somewhat on the yearning, acoustic guitar-heavy "Nobody's Hero" and weave orchestral strings into the minor-keyed "Last Confession." Of course, no album from the Heavy would be complete without a '50s monster movie-inspired number and here we get "Miss California," a cheeky anthem about a former beauty queen and heartbreaker who "spends your money as she spits your bones." The song, as with much of Hurt & the Merciless, showcases the Heavy's distinctive ability to channel both Cee Lo Green and Screamin' Jay Hawkins at the same time. ~ Matt Collar

• Format: Vinyl
• Genre: Rock

As described in our Privacy Policy, we collect personal information from your interactions with us and our website, including through cookies and similar technologies. We may also share this personal information with third parties, including advertising partners. We do this in order to show you ads on other websites that are more relevant to your interests and for other reasons outlined in our privacy policy.

Sharing of personal information for targeted advertising based on your interaction on different websites may be considered "sales", "sharing", or "targeted advertising" under certain U.S. state privacy laws. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to opt out of these activities. If you would like to exercise this opt-out right, please follow the instructions below.

If you visit our website with the Global Privacy Control opt-out preference signal enabled, depending on where you are, we will treat this as a request to opt-out of activity that may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information or other uses that may be considered targeted advertising for the device and browser you used to visit our website.