The Heavy’s sound has always been an indie or alternative rock sound that blended soul/blues/RNB with Rock so well which is why they were drawn to me. Their 2nd album “The House That Dirt Build” was the album to put them on the map with songs like “How You Like Me Now?” and “Short Change Hero” to name some. Those two songs have been used in countless forms of media like TV shows, movies, video games and commercials. They followed up those hit songs with another “What Makes a Good Man?” from their 3rd album “The Glorious Dead”. That album peaked at #191 on the Billboard 100.
They then took a step backwards in releasing an album just to release one in “Hurt & Merciless”. It did not have the soul and feeling of the previous albums’ creativity and passion. There was too much over-saturation with most of the tracks that sound so similar it’s difficult to distinguish one from another. The horn section ruined most of the songs which buried too much of the great lead vocals of Kelvin Swaby.
We can all be glad their new album their fifth “Sons” tries to make up for the previous album. It has them trying to sound like they recaptured the same magic they had before with a compilation of catchy songs that make for a good but not great addition to The Heavy’s booming discography. They hit you right away with “Heavy for You” that has amazing guitar work that gets you amped up for the rest of the album. They also end it well with “Burn Bright” a nice emotional beautiful sounding soulful song.
The issue with the album is how they structure the order of the songs when three of their best songs are at the end especially their best song being the 2nd to last song. “What Don’t Kill You” is their best song on the album and would better in the beginning or in the middle to break up some of the average songs. It has the same feel of their previous big hits where you will remember the chorus with it being super catchy with a good story being told, which why it is the best song. Another great track is “Better as One” which has a good alt rock feel and serves as a rallying cry for peace and unity written by front man Kelvin Swaby after the violent events that occurred in Charlottesville in 2017.
The tracks “Thief”, ”Fire”, “Put the Hurt on me” and “Fighting for the Same Thing” have the great sound of their older tracks by blending that RNB/Blues so well with Rock that it sounds like their catchy songs from the previous albums. The clunker of this album is “Simple Things” it has its RNB style but it sounds too funky with it sounding like a bad disco dance song so this is one song to avoid. They make up for it by having a good sounding rock song come right after it called “A Whole Lot of Love” not to be confused with the Led Zeppelin song. The remaining song is called “Hurt Interlude” that is in the middle of the album to break things up, and don’t get me wrong, it sounds like a great RNB song. The issue is it would be better as an intro to start off the album because it gets lost in the middle because it has a similar style like the three songs that come before it and one right after.
Overall this album has 6-7 good to great songs and 3-4 average songs with only one clunker, which means they did make up for a clunker of an album from the last one. Some of the same issues that plagued the previous album was it didn’t have the same feel as the other two that they can’t remember what made them popular in the first place. It just does not live up to the other two but that is ok to have a good album but not a great album. Most artists fail to even make more than one good album and they now have two good albums to go with their two great albums, so let’s just move on and forgot that their 4th album ever existed. “Sons” is definitely an album to listen to even if you are not a huge fan of “The Heavy” just because of how catchy the songs are.