Counter Records
2007
Great Vengeance And Furious Fire
About This Album
Had John Singleton's remake of Shaft been released just a few years later -- say, sometime around 2007, when the Heavy first emerged with their gritty mixture of funk and soul -- then the director would've done well to make Great Vengeance and Furious Fire the movie's soundtrack. Blending horn samples and noisy percussion into some furiously beat-driven songs, the Heavy often sound like the sort of street-smart band that would've ignited a bidding war between Stax and Sire Records in the mid-'60s. They combine Isaac Hayes with Gnarls Barkley, Curtis Mayfield with Jimi Hendrix, Mike Skinner's elastic delivery with Prince's falsetto vocals. For fans of retro-urban music, this sounds like a dream combination -- and during the album's first half, it certainly is. "That Kind of Man" is a blistering dance track, its messy production and blaring riffs contrasted by the cool, sexy vocals of bandleader Kelvin Swaby. The frontman loses his head toward the song's conclusion, screaming a handful of "C'mon!"s and "Yeah!"s while his bandmates strut their way though clouds of distortion, cymbal crashes, horn samples, and wah wah pedals.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,4,6,7,8 and 9)

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