Black clouds, hot sheets of wind, electricity in the air, destruction at hand. Hurricane season in The Big Easy? Not quite. It's actually Crowbar, native sons of Nola, respected deliverers of deliverance, preparing to pound the coast (and indeed ALL the coasts) with a new slab of metal anguish called "Equilibruim." Co-creators of a tight knit and respected metal scene that includes Corrosion Of Conformity, Eyehategod, Acid Bath, Soilent Green, Down and Pantera's Phil Anselmo, Crowbar have been a 10 year testimony to the core tenets of the Nola sound, a horrific mixture of English doom & swamp monster sludge, creeping towards slo-mo hardcore in their middle years, but, never giving up the surging but deliberate power and insight that distinguished early records like 92's "Obedience Through Suffering" and 93's "Crowbar." Now, a decade later, with five studio albums and two compilations under their heaving belts, the band are set to deliver "Equilibruim," an intelligent, textured piece of work that expands upon the dark melodic complexity of 98's "Odd Fellows Rest." Slightly more ornate and slightly more reverent of true spiritual doom (think Sabbath, Trouble, Cathedral). "Equilibruim" is a masterwork of cosmic depression. But out of the dark, Kirk shines the light. "A lot of kids write in and people talk to me, telling me how much they love the lyrics, and I appreciate it. Theme wise, we have no fictional songs whatsoever. We've never written about anything other than what reality is to us. It's just about life's ups and downs, finding strength through hard times. I think a lot of people can identify. A lot of the songs will mean one thing to me and someone else will read it and see something totally different. But, they can still find something positive in it."
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