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The Heavy return with "Can't Play Dead", a highlight from their recently released 3rd album The Glorious Dead, which demonstrates their unique blend of swamp-soul-hip-hop-rock that is taking the musical world by storm. 

“It feels like the soundtrack to a zombie B-movie,” explains Swaby of a track that aims some well-targeted barbs at the music industry. “There are way too many puppets in this industry now. Real music is getting lost. You have all these shows that make puppets every season, and then you don’t hear about them the next season. [This business] can take you to the grave and spit you out.” 

Over a gargantuan garage rock riff and thumping drums, Swaby once again brings the monster-soul, backing vocals welling up and strings sawing back and forth like the Hammer House orchestra. Melodramatic, ambitious and moreish, it’s yet another reminder that The Heavy stand on their own. 

Most recently the band have been feted for “What Makes A Good Man?” – their huge single, which saw them get only the second ever encore on the Letterman show (they also got the first!), plus appearances on Carson Daly and Craig Ferguson, playlists all over the world and syncronisations all over the shop, including the season finale of “True Blood” and the soundtrack to video game “Borderlands 2.” The track is represented here in a brutal hip hop-soul remix from the one and only Kenny Dope. 

With their forthcoming UK tour already nearly sold out, The Heavy are ready to bring home some of the mania which meets their appearances in the US. Get the fever.

Renegade English soul-rockers The Heavy are happy to announce the release of their new album, The Glorious Dead, on 21 August 2012 via Counter Records/Ninja Tune.

The Glorious Dead is the band’s third full-length LP, and the follow-up to their acclaimed sophomore record The House That Dirt Built (2009).  Self-produced and with their unique, raw eclecticism fully intact, it’s their most fully-realized record yet, mixing together soul, hip hop, rock, blues and funk into glorious, raucous party music that is equally full of heart.

The first single from The Glorious Dead, “What Makes A Good Man,” follows in the footsteps of the band’s sleeper hit “How You Like Me Now”  with its monumental chorus and crunching beats. But there’s more to the album than just that, from the horror film atmospherics of “Can’t Play Dead” to the laid-back sincerity of “Curse Me Good,” the funked-up hip hop rhythm of “Big Bad Wolf” and the epic, heavy-hitting gospel rock ‘n’ roll of “Same ‘Ol.” Throughout, vocalist Swaby’s voice soars, packed with yearning and pure soul.

The Heavy have been building. With a background in the joys of sampling and a foreground in scuzzy guitar, bass and beaten up drums, with schizo music tastes and a West Country pace, they’ve been building brick by dirty brick. Now they’d like to welcome you into their beautiful home for a little nose around, a kind of party if you like. And if a little blood gets spilled then that’s just how it is. Nobody said it was going to be a spread from 'Hello' magazine. It will, though, be the best party you’ve ever been to.

'Oh No! Not You Again' starts things off, hitting like the garage-punk monster it is, Shingae Shoniwa of The Noisettes offering up the backing vox on a tune which sounds like Little Richard posssessed by the devil and turned up to 11. Main single, 'How You Like Me Now' is pure voodoo-funk. 'Sixteen' channels the ghost of Screamin’ Jay into a tawdry tale of Satan and his young bride. 'Short Change Hero' is an epic Spaghetti Western love song calling on the youth to drop their tools. 'No Time' combines a filthy break with thundering riffing about losing the love that was supposed to be forever. 'Long Way From Home' is punk-blues of genuine yearning. 'Cause For Alarm' is a reggae/2 Tone stepper, all crunched up and beaten-up for size. 'What You Want Me To Do' combines the intensity of Hendrix with an obia ceremony. 'Stuck' shows that for all the wide-eyed madness, The Heavy can also come out with the most affecting love songs which effortlessly combine their many influences into something both completely new and utterless timeless.

Mixed and produced by Jim Abiss (best known for his work with the Arctic Monkeys, Adele and Kasabian) and with Noisettes input on three tracks, 'The House That Dirt Built' represents a huge step forward from an already fantastic debut in 'Great Vengeance & Furious Fire'.

Since then The Heavy have toured the world and, where the first record was sample-based, the new one is much more a product of working as a band. Like the early rock ‘n’ roll, blues and rhythm and blues which have influenced it, 'The House That Dirt Built' is larger than life, funny, terrifying and occasionally beautiful. It is, in fact, a house you’ll want to visit again.

Prepare to burn. Sorry. Don’t wanna put you off or nuffink. But prepare to burn.

The Heavy make the kind of dirty, guitar-scorched hip hop soul which leads you into temptation. And then you’re going to burn. The dark side of four boys from the arse-end of Bath, the beast of Bodmin Moor, half man/half wolf, The Heavy specialise in making everything wrong sound right. So successful are they, so good does it feel, so natural, that voodoo filth will be pouring through you before you know what’s going on.

From the moment you hear first single, 'That Kind of Man', you know only exorcism can save you. Combining the gritty bottom end of classic Wu Tang with wall-of-sound guitar wailing and raw blues-soul, it’s instantly recognisable and utterly addictive, Swaby’s sweet-yet-threatening vocal raising it to another level. 'Coleen' is a more stripped-down hip hop groove, with backing singers giving the tune a Stax-on-acid feel. 'Set Me Free' throws acoustic guitar in to the mix for a more laid-back (though still rhythmically driving) number. 'You Don’t Know' shows heavier rock influences, a building pile-up of riffage. 'Girl' gives Swaby a chance to show off his (slightly tongue in cheek) rapping style, over a rhythm which can only be described as Kinks-meets-Marly Marl. 'Doing Fine' is the emotional centrepiece of the album, a downhome blues straight outta the West Country. 'In The Morning' is frugging and flithy. 'Bruk Pocket Lament' sounds like classic blues brought bang up to date and reeling from too much meths. And the raging 'Dignity' ain’t going to stand no fucking with it, seen? The album finishes with 'Who Needs The Sunshine', which carries echoes of the Bristol scene of Massive Attack and Tricky, but reconstituted as an epic country blues.

The core of The Heavy are Swaby and Taylor, who have known each other for a decade. Swaby’s parents were one of the first West Indian families to move to Bath. One of eleven siblings, he grew up surrounded by reggae, Prince and Two Tone as well as the hip hop he embraced so fervently. When he met Taylor they bonded over vintage rhythm and blues and the movies of Jim Jarmusch.

Despite starting with an Atari and a four track, the pair soon recruited Ellul (drums) and Page (bass) and began gigging as a four piece. Perhaps their unique sound is in part the result of coming from a town they describe as “the graveyard of all ambition”. Or some West Coutry leyline shiznit. Either that or they’re just sex-crazed lunatics. At the end of the day, who cares as long as it sounds this good?