The
Heavy
Great
Vengeance and Furious Fire
****
Fittingly
monikered The Heavy make a pretty weighty racket. Their debut
is a surging slab of rockin’, hip-hop soul making a pile
of disparic sounds fit into a mind-blowing whole.
Lead single ‘That Kind of Man’ bolts classic Wu Tang
beats to fuzzed-up funk guitar in a mind-blowing reworking of
Curtis Mayfield’s classic moments.
Great Vengeance and Furious Fire is a classic soul record in the
making, infused with a familiar groove but not scared of exploring
new territory (not unlike the mish-mash of The Go! Team).
‘Colleen’ is drugged-up Stax soul. Elsewhere ‘Set
Me Free’ is a driving acoustic number which is summery and
laid-back and ‘You Don’t Know’ pins a powerful
soul vocal to classic rock stomp with incendiary results. The
slightly sleazy, tongue-in-cheek ‘rap’ on ‘Girl’
charts the thoughts of a man on the prowl, as golden-era hip-hop
beats pound over Kinks-esque 60’s guitar-power.
The album completes with heart-felt balladry (‘Doing Fine’),
filthy hip-hop rock (‘In The Morning’) and trippy,
electric-blues (‘Brukpockets Lament’). The album ends
with the haunting slow-jam ‘Who Needs The Sunshine?’
Great Vengeance and Furious Fire is an ambitious slice
of modern soul brimming with ideas and emotion. The Heavy specialise
in making everything wrong sound right, in a seductive melee of
sound that will have you gasping for more.
by David Wavies
