sHeavy - Moons In Penumbra (2013)

Back in 2001, my buddy Pat showed up at my house with what was believed to be a bunch of new Black Sabbath demo tracks he had spent all night downloading on those early dial-up modem internet connections. Rolling up a spliff, we jumped in his car and hit the road to listen to the disc. Pats car stereo wasn't the greatest and most mp3's back then where complete garbage, but every song was a solid Sabbath hit! At some point we were discussing how good the tracks were and that Ozzy's voice sounded amazing and almost emitted a younger energy. At some point through the haze of smoke and heavy riffs we started to both have a suspicion that maybe it wasn't really Ozzy singing… and if it's not Ozzy singing, it's probably not Tony, Bill and Geezer either. Cruising back to my house, we quickly fired up the computer and got online (which was not very quick actually back then) to do some research. After a few searches Pat typed in "Mr. Zero" and finally we had something to go on. Turns out the band was named Sheavy (or sHeavy, actually) and the CD was a collection of tracks from their newly released Celestial Hi-Fi and the Electric Sleep albums pieced together. No longer caring about it being a Black Sabbath album we started jumping around the web looking for everything we could on sHeavy. sHeavy became our new favorite band, pushing Sleep to the side for the time being. Through sHeavy we discovered Rise Above Records and soon their whole catalog of releases from Electric Wizard, Goatsnake, and Orange Goblin.

Fast forward to 2011. As i was filling in some holes in my vinyl collection I realized that none of the sHeavy albums were on vinyl. I had found a bootleg of Celestial Hi-Fi on purple wax on Ebay, but the price was super high and I wasn't sure if it was real or not as no other copies ever surfaced. I contacted Rise Above Records a few times and never received any response. Some time went by and Pat actually found vocalist Steve Hennessey online somewhere and sent me the contact information. I send an email and within hours Steve wrote me back. We discussed releasing the early albums on vinyl and Steve contacted Lee Dorian, who actually responded right away. At the time Lee was leaving for a six week vacation and would contact us back upon return. A few months later Lee finally contacted Steve back and had decided that he didn't want to lease HPRX the releases and that RA would instead release the sHeavy albums on vinyl. Steve was pretty upset and that more or less ended our contact as we had no project to work on.

A month or so ago I received an email from Steve, who was again saddened by the fact that Rise Above never released the albums. Steve also mentioned he had a new album he had recorded with a new line-up if I wanted to give it a listen. Loving most everything recorded before I was skeptical of a new line-up and actually had negative feelings for some reason that it wouldn't be any good. Oh man, was I wrong! I called my old friend Pat up again and rolled up a fatty like we did all those years ago. We popped the album on and track after track captured our attention more and more. Steve had taken the classic sHeavy sound and slowed it down a touch and added a very dark tone to the entire album. Sabbath riffs…check…Steve's creepy Ozzy-ish vocals….check…. dark doom tone…check! I didn't know if I was just being a fan boy or if I had just heard a really amazing album. I had to call in the HPRX staff for a listen. Bowls were smoked, album was played and grins appeared on everyone's faces! I instantly knew that HPRX had to release this album on vinyl!

If you are already a sHeavy fan, you wont be disappointed in the slightest. If you never checked out sHeavy and love Sabbath, Orchid and all those bands that jacked the classic Sabbath sound you certainly missed some amazing albums! I suggest you go and check them out on Youtube or something. sHeavy has been overlooked for years while on Rise Above Records/Candlelight as they never got any vinyl treatments, pretty much making them of no interest to many of the current music fans who only buy wax. Well, that's about to change!

~ by Hydro-Phonic Records