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CROWBAR

The moment you hear it, you know it’s CROWBAR. Praised by Pitchfork, VICE, and Metal Hammer. Twice immortalized by MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head. The group is worshipped by the heartbroken and downtrodden - those who exorcise their demons in smoke-covered riffs of mournful devastation. A genuine band’s band, with a wide-ranging influence across multiple genres, Crowbar “helped draw up the sludge metal blueprints” (Kerrang!). Celebrating a recent 30th anniversary, Crowbar is led by one of the most beloved figures in heavy metal, riff overlord Kirk Windstein. His menacing bellow and smooth drawl put resilient, unrepentant strength behind even the most somber odes to suffering.

Crowbar songs are unapologetic emotional outpourings, with a bare-knuckle resolve alongside its soul-searching vulnerability, reliably delivered with crushing heaviness. Zero and Below, which cements the band’s dense catalog as exactly one dozen studio albums deep, is the most unforgivably doomy Crowbar record since their landmark 1998 effort, Odd Fellows Rest. Zero and Below is reverently old-school, counterbalanced by a resonant melodicism that’s stunningly mature. Songs like “Chemical Gods,” “Bleeding from Every Hole,” and “It’s Always Worth the Gain” demonstrate what Crowbar does better than any other band: powerful, evocative, and crushingly heavy music.

Gargantuan-sounding career-resurgence slabs Sever the Wicked Hand (2011), Symmetry in Black (2014), and The Serpent Only Lies (2016) sits mightily alongside Crowbar classics like Time Heals Nothing (1995), comprising a robust catalog worthy of examination, dedication, and repeat listens. Songs like “Planets Collide,” “Existence is Punishment,” and “All I Had (I Gave)” are anthems as demonstrative of the sludge sound as early songs by Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth represent thrash.

Sever the Wicked Hand introduced guitarist Matt Brunson and drummer Tommy Buckley to the Crowbar faithful. Symmetry in Black began a partnership with producer Duane Simoneaux. Rolling Stone named it one of the 20 Best Metal Albums of 2014; Pitchfork praised it as well. Exclaim! honored The Serpent Only Lies as “another worthy album to add to Crowbar’s influential and highly revered catalog.” Rounded out by bassist Shane Wesley, Crowbar and Simoneaux work their magic repeatedly on Zero and Below. As Metal Hammer astutely observed, Crowbar “exists in a genre of one.”

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PRIMITIVE MAN

Listening to Primitive Man is a devastating experience of Doom as performed by just three members. Their discography of agonizing personal and universal hell is spread across three albums, two EPs and a raft of splits released over more than 10 years. 2020 saw the release of the groups most recent full length album ‘Immersion’ (Relapse Records), a terrifying and confrontational record that expressed resentment and the unbearable during uncertain times. The tension through out the record is palpable. McCarthy’s foul roar feels wrenched from a cavern so deep that it defied language itself. The riffs are vast slabs – edifices dragged and erected to stand tall against the outrages of ‘humanity rotten on the vine’ (‘Consumption’). With 2013’s Scorn and 2017’s Caustic, Primitive Man raged against religious dogma, elitism, capitalism and the creature within, desperate to burst out. They keep the animal inside at bay with a rancorous and cerebral blend of the heaviest sounds. Splits with Hell and Unearthly Trance, and a host of others, have seen the band branch out into experimental noise. Other projects from members of the band – Black Curse, Vermin Womb and Many Blessings – show how they are bursting at the seams to express their outrage at the state of things, in different mutations.

2022 brings the release of the groups latest album, Insurmountable. Four new suffocating tracks totaling over 38 minutes of Primitive Man in their strongest and most crushing artistic display to date. Mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk and featuring the artwork of Ethan McCarthy (Hell Simulation).

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BODYBOX

TWO FISTED TWO STEPPIN DOUBLEWIDE DEATH METAL STRAIGHT FROM THE DEPTHS OF FLORIDA.

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AFGHAN HAZE

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