Latest Review: Magic Lantern - High Beams

Long Beach’s Magic Lantern have finally gone and released a new sonic document after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. Eagerly anticipated by those who have been biding their time waiting for the band to get on with their uber limited cassette only and CD-R releases (their Self-Titled CD-R was limited to 30), “High Beams”, the band’s latest opus [...]

The Heavy - Great Vengeance Furious Fire

heav·y; Of great intensity, Having great power or force, Indulging to a great degree, Of great significance or profundity…

Not since the The Clash has a band’s name been as succinct and appropriate as The Heavy. These four guys and one gal hailing from the town of Bath (UK) have an arsenal of sweet baadasssss songs that transport you back to a time when blow was big, hair was bigger and Dracula was black. However you slice, dice, cut or sort it, their album Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, released in the UK last year and here in the states just a few weeks ago, is one goddamn heavy piece of work.

The songs on Vengeance range from the crackling lo-fi, slow trip, blood-in blood-out variety (“Brukpocket’s Lament”, “Who Needs the Sunshine”), to red light, 3am, freak nasty party jams (“Colleen”), to the top-down, hot pursuit, supercharged single “That Kind of Man”. An homage to blacksploitation films and the music that accompanied and often outshined them, it’s as if The Heavy created the soundtrack to their own film that’s never been made. There are outrageous, cheeky, rough and raw moments strung throughout the album, and like any great work, Vengeance is unapologetic and uninhibited.

Blunt and straightforward as their name implies, the band makes no bones about what kind of music their making, R&B. Never in a narrow sense of the genre though, taking as many cues from the likes of Mike Skinner and Lenny Kravitz on tracks such as “Girl” and “In the Morning”, as they do Willie Hutch, Curtis Mayfield, Shuggie Otis and many others throughout the rest.

MP3: The Heavy - Colleen

The Heavy hits SoCal playing Casbah May 5th, Cinespace May 6th and Bordello May 7th.