The Long Reach of Crowbar’s Sever the Wicked Hand
Posted in Reviews on February 8th, 2011 by JJ KoczanReleased six years to the day from its predecessor, 2005’s Lifesblood for the Downtrodden, the latest album from Crowbar, dubbed Sever the Wicked Hand (E1 Music), finds the New Orleans sludge progenitors embarking on a full-circle turn of their own influence. With visual layout by Mike D. of Killswitch Engage, mixing and mastering by Zeuss (Shadows Fall, etc.), management by Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta – with whom Crowbar guitarist/vocalist/central-figure Kirk Windstein also plays in Kingdom of Sorrow – and a take on their traditional sludgy sound that seems at times to favor the kind of heavy breakdowns that the subsequent generation of metallers made their name on, it could easily be said that Crowbar are now under the influence of those whom they most influenced. Listening to a song like “Liquid Sky and Cold Black Earth,” even acknowledging that the ultra-groovy breakdown is nothing new to the Windstein musical/riff-writing arsenal (he’s been doing it since the early ‘90s to great affect), on Sever the Wicked Hand, the approach is given a musical context it didn’t have even six years ago.
And why not? A lot’s happened in that time. The already-noted Kingdom of Sorrow has released two albums, and Down – the Southern metal supergroup in which Windstein joins C.O.C.’s Pepper Keenan on guitar – released their third album to huge acclaim and commercial success on the road. On perhaps a more personal note, Windstein’s sobriety is a topic of discussion lyrically on several of the Sever the Wicked Hand tracks – “Cleanse Me, Heal Me,” “As I Become One” and the title cut –and a song like the late-arriving ballad, “Echo an Eternity” seems to be not much more than your typical “rocker’s song about his kid,” if given the twist of being run through the typically Crowbar, slow-played, downtuned interpretation. That said, the lyrical appeal that runs throughout Sever the Wicked Hand, and indeed across Crowbar’s whole discography, is Windstein’s unflinching honesty. If what that brings out of his venerably guttural voice in 2011 is love for his child and his struggle to stay sober, I’m not about to fault him for that. I’d rather take what’s heartfelt than something born out of kowtowing to the expectations either of fans or critics.
Among the critiques I’ve heard of Sever the Wicked Hand is that, “it’s awfully fast,” and indeed, upon hearing advance-leaked cut “The Cemetery Angels,” I thought the same thing, even as that song breaks into one of the slowest riffs on the album for its second half. Tracks like “Liquid Sky and Cold Black Earth” and closer “Symbiosis” offer plenty of the languid pacing Crowbar is known for, and I’ll go further to say it’s a myth that Crowbar only plays slow. Some of their greatest early-career triumphs – songs like “All I Had I Gave” from 1993’s self-titled and “Waiting in Silence” from the 1991 Obedience Thru Suffering debut – relied on the juxtaposition between fast and slow parts, and that holds true for the Sever the Wicked Hand material as well. Windstein at this point knows what works in Crowbar, and he makes good use of their solidified sonic pastiche on “Protectors of the Shrine” and centerpiece “As I Become One,” which breaks into a melodic guitar interplay between Windstein and fellow six-stringer Matt Brunson that helps break the intensity Sever the Wicked Hand’s first half and set up the 3:45 ambient interlude “A Farewell to Misery” – itself a launch point for the record’s back end.