Back then, during the mostly forgotten years of the Bush I presidency, Crowbar, a heavy band with a sluggish pacing, were seen as somewhat uncouth. After all, 1991 belonged to death metal. In that year alone Suffocation’s “Effigy of the Forgotten” was released, and so too were Massacre’s “Beyond,” Atheist’s “Unquestionable Presence,” Morbid Angel’s “Blessed Are the Sick,” Pestilence’s “Testimony of the Ancients,” Death’s “Human,” Entombed’s “Clandestine,” and Carcass’s “Necrotism – Descanting the Insalubrious.” There are of course more records to list, but frankly my typing fingers hurt something fierce right now. And besides—we’re talkin’ ‘bout Crowbar here.
Their first time out was an underground success, but it hardly pointed towards greatness. “Obedience Thru Suffering” is a darkly tragic and relentlessly heavy record. More importantly, “Obedience Thru Suffering,” which sounds like it was recorded on the cheap in a studio that was drenched in natural reverb, established Crowbar’s signature sound: baritone guitars that rarely go above a B tuning, drums that sound like they are being played by a Chuck Biscuits robot, and an overall low-end effect that puts the proto-doom of Sabbath to shame. “My Agony” alone is worth a thousand praises, and upon listening to “Obedience Thru Suffering” again for the first time in years, I can now empathize with those critics, both professional and amateur, who regard Crowbar’s first attempt as their finest.
Well, I hate to be the naysayer, but, for my humble pocket change, “Crowbar,” the band’s 1993 follow-up to “Obedience Thru Suffering,” is the superior product. First of all, Crowbar’s sophomore studio release was produced by none other than Philip H. Anselmo—a musician and raconteur who is plenty capable of guiding a record towards a sonic apex. “Crowbar” is far slicker than its predecessor, and its well-rounded and up-front sound only helps to bring forth the inherent heaviness in Crowbar’s compositions. The record’s two singles, “All I Had (I Gave)” and “Existence Is Punishment,” were not only fully enjoyed by both Beavis and Butt-head, but they helped to capture and popularize the doom-meets-hardcore punk fusion that Crowbar churned out years before Northeastern metalcore hit the malls and the Cineplex.
And while songs such as “High Rate Extinction” and “I Have Failed” helped to create the mystique of Crowbar as the morose and fat sounding version of New Orleans sludge, lesser known ditties such as “Will That Never Dies” and “Fixation” highlighted those unique Southern signatures that help to make sludge the envy of the metal planet (a fearsome place indeed). In particular, the Irish jig at the heart of “Will That Never Dies” aptly displays the bounce and groove that heavy metal can accomplish. Interestingly, Crowbar proved that extreme metal could be funky years before the Brazilian jungle boys of Sepultura rediscovered their ancestral spirits on 1996’s “Roots.”
Of course one cannot mention Crowbar without alluding to the band’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter.” In his rockography “Hammer of the Gods,” author Stephen Davis labels “No Quarter” as a Page-Plant collaboration that depicted the band as “a Viking death squad riding the winds of Thor to some awful Satanic destiny.” While Led Zep were no strangers to the charms of the pagan Far North, it is hard to imagine these four Englishmen as mead-swilling barbarians. At the end of the day, Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones were appetite men, and mostly they just wanted pussy and drugs. Crowbar’s rendition of “No Quarter” sounds far more primitive, and even though New Orleans is mostly a muggy swamp more akin to Latin America than any fjord or Finnish mountain town, the men of Crowbar really come off sounding like proper berserker's on “No Quarter.”
While most have noted that Kirk’s raw and untamed vocal delivery on “Crowbar” as the album’s highlight, the whole band (Kirk, Matt Thomas, Todd “Sexy T” Strange, and Craig Nunemacher) turned out one stellar performance after another. In just a little over thirty-six minutes, “Crowbar” charted a whole new course for heavy metal. Doom metal of the kind that we know today was merely lurking around the corner when sludge first started to take off. Was it influenced by “Crowbar?” Absolutely. Not only is Crowbar’s second record a majestic ode to gut rock, but its idiosyncratic take on Southern sludge (a sub-genre that totally thrives on idiosyncrasies) helped to define and give shape to an in-house rebellion. In the post-“Crowbar” world, progress in metal is no longer the exclusive territory of bands that make things faster or more technical. “Crowbar” showed that the soul of Iommi was still alive in the hearts of aspiring titans, and that New Orleans, a city then on the periphery of the metal underground, was capable of returning heavy metal back to its original form, albeit with a few added bonuses in order to keep things interesting.
Words: Benjamin Welton
Official Website