Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 HEAVY!!!! February 28, 2004
Dokter Pogo (New Orleans)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
In 1995, my guitar player called me and told me that we would be opening for Crowbar at Zeppelin's in Fat City (about 8 square blocks right outside of New Orleans, containing the city's premier metal bars). For the past year, all I had been listening to was this CD. So, you can imagine my excitement as I pictured my little group playing with the heaviest band in the world. But it wasn't such a good idea after all. We sounded paper thin against the mammoth guitars of Crowbar, and they figuratively spanked us, right in front of hundreds of fans. We stupidly agreed to play another show a few weeks later in Slidell, LA, and once again, we came off as the Lollipop Guild. Lesson: NEVER go up against something this heavy and expect to come out with your dignity in tact. This album set the pace for heavy in the mid-nineties, and very few even came close to it's mastery of molten sludge riffs. The vocals scream of pain and hopelessness, with "Self-Inflicted" and "I Have Failed" being the ultimate self-loather's anthems...and I just can't put into words how freakin' insanely heavy the guitars are. They crunch and roar with a ferocity that is STILL unmatched, almost a decade later. How about this word for a description: chuggachunkawaaaachiggachunk...yell this word in a really low James Earl Jones voice, screaming it through a microphone hooked up to a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier guitar amp. Try that, and it might be close to what you can expect from this album. Every song is full of some of the sickest riffing this side of Black Sabbath, and the laid back tempos push the songs along like barges on the Mississippi River. Definitely not for the meek listener. Wear protective gear while playing this album.
Breakdown...... April 28, 2005
BLEEKER (NYC)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I got his CD when it first released back in 93. I remember saying to myself.... holy $H*! this is genious! Crowbar essencially took the breakdowns found in NYC hardcore music, wound them down to 2 miles an hour and turned them into full fledged songs!
I honestly didnt keep up with Crowbar after thier 2nd release. I never realized they released so many CDs. I've heard a few of them but quite frankly their first 2 CDs still stand out as their best efforts.
GREATEST BAND EVER March 14, 2007
Bob Moreault (vardun)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I JUST GOT MY 5TH COPIE OF THIS ALBUM (1ST WAS A TAPED CASSETTE - LOST ONE
OR TWO - BROKE AN OTHER COPIE) SAW THEN IN 93 WITH PANTERA AND THEY WHER
THE BEST.KIRK IS A GREAT SONG WRITHER, GREG ON DRUMS COMES UP WITH AWSOME
PARTS, AND TOD STRANGE IS FAT AND SLOW..... EXCATLY LIKE THIS BAND.THANK YOU NEW ORLEANS FOR ALL THESE GREAT BANDS.RECOMMANDE ALL CROWBAR CD`S AND
THE DVD KIKS ASS
a straight up, tell-it-like-it-is pounding doom sludge classic July 12, 2006
the eclectic extrovert (PA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is crazy in some ways, but at one time this album was in my top 20 of all time. It could easily be called "Odes to the Unappreciated," in terms of lyrical content and mood. ("ALL I had I Gave," "Self-Inflicted," etc.)
Now, doom metal has many sub-genres, and these guys fit the sludge-rock, straight doom label. This can in no way be mistaken with goth-tinged doom, or deathdoom, or whatever. But, if you like something that simply pummels you, makes you look at yourself in the mirror and admit that you don't like a great deal of what you see, while still making it clear that you won't accept trash from anyone else, this is just what the doctor ordered. I mean, how can you go wrong with titles like "Existence is Punishment," and "Holding Nothing" (the title chorus, BTW, drawn out in sort of a mournful chant, overlayed with barking, punk-tinged verses)? And "I Have Failed" is one of the most heart-honest, tortured songs I've ever heard. Now that I think of it, reading these titles alone makes you feel like you've leafed through Kafka cliffnotes.
Without question that SPIRIT, if not musical style, of emotionally depleted Delta blues rings through (which they are from the swamplands of "Nawlins," LA.), minus the songs about being dumped by lovers (though these songs might work well in those cases as well). It hits the same vein as Vitus, but with less wah-wah overkill, and minus the twinge of Ozzy vocals. The vocals are delivered in the punk-or-thrash style, but pained, strained, and slowed down--angry and harsh, yet not shouting. It may be the vocals, exhortated almost more than sung, that add to the feeling of blues, though this is throbbing, pounding, tortured swamp rock metal all the way.
In general, if you can't decide whether to 1) put down your whiskey, leave the bar, and go home with a newfound conviction to clean up your act and "get your head on straight," or to 2) order another (minus the "rocks"), blame the world for your troubles, and start a brawl to relieve the pain, Crowbar has been there too, bro,' and they're more than willing to take you with them.
One of those cds I didn't expect to be so good! July 31, 2003
Carl Martinez (Miami, FL)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ok, here's one of the rare times I'm giving a cd review where I'm actually serious...a friend of mine gave me this cd not because he thought it was bad but he was more into Morrissey, REM type stuff. I was familiar with Crowbar from their "All I Had (I Gave)" video that was played on the old Headbangers Ball during its waning days and of course on Beavis & Butthead making fun of singer/guitarist Kirk Windstein 'taking a dump' in the video...but anyways I listened to the cd and it has become one of my faves, actually I don't know why they released that particular song as a single, it's not bad but all the other songs are so much better! These fat guys kick a--!!! Old Black Sabbath meets Motorhead meets thrash! An overlooked gem.
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