Crowbar - Sonic Excess in Its Purest Form (25th Anniversary) [2LP Black & Lemonade]

Crowbar's Sonic Excess in Its Purest Form returns as a black and lemonade anniversary double LP, the New Orleans sludge heavyweights at their most crushing and most heartfelt.

Released in 2001 on Spitfire, the album marked a turning point for the band. It was the last Crowbar record to feature guitarist Sammy Pierre Duet, and the only one with bassist Jeff Okoneski and former Machine Head drummer Tony Costanza, a short-lived line-up that left behind one of the band's most focused statements.

Producer Dave Fortman captured the group's trademark weight, down-tuned riffs that move like shifting tectonic plates, with Kirk Windstein's voice cutting through as a rasp of pain and resolve. The Lasting Dose opens with real menace, To Build a Mountain turns grinding misery into something close to uplift, and Repulsive in Its Splendid Beauty lives up to its oxymoron. Empty Room closes the album on a bleak, weary ache that lingers long after the final chord.

Crowbar have always been about heaviness with a beating heart, and this record shows why the sludge and doom underground still treats them with reverence. Spread across two LPs, every slow, punishing riff gets the room it deserves, and the low end hits with the force of a swamp-borne storm.