HEAVY HANDS

HEY -- dig the new jams. album 'smoke signals' OUT NOW on language of stone - www.languageofstone.com - manufactured and distributed by drag city - www.dragcity.com .

available now at an independent record store near you! It is available as a download, as a CD and a limited edition pressing of vinyl!

mailing list for shows and stuff: heavyhandsband@gmail.com



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REVIEWS



Time Machine has stopped in 1971. Among Vietnam warriors and peace Hippier this trio suddenly popping up.

Quality label Language of Stone (led by Espers' Greg Weeks), with its eight first-release marked with the largely experimental nyfolk release of various sort. With Smoke Signals violates the stigmatizing this range. Brooklyn-band Heavy Hands graves rather down in the dark stone / prog, 70-Digit, heavy and bluesbaset psykedelia with a hemp fragrant veil draped over it. On debut Smoke Signals melted groovy bass lines, sparkling Wah-Wah Fuzz and trippy strobelys together in a kind of trauma filled nightmare that from Vietnam War days. Not in any way wholly different from the Black Angels have given us in recent years. Or numerous prog band from the late 60-century to mid 70-century.



The Psykedeliske approach to Heavy Hands is consistently present, and can be illustrated by, for example, the Sinhalese mask on the jacket and that låttitler From Stonehenge Thursday Saturn. But it also rattled by the band, and they kvier not to go into the garage: Two-minute buyers Black Heart and She Got It is rooted in both the 90-century Seattle and 70-century Birmingham.

But there are some real head ripper that really makes this CD. Tribal See Saw is a pure killer, is the best and 7 minutes in which power trios power commensurate with a groovy dynamics that are both kind and finished danceable at the same time. One of this year's songs. Innledende Introductory Can not See Through is also a virile hell, which admittedly is more of straight stone-ground, but still manage to put us in the right mood rent. I will also draw up 3 Days Gone, which opens like a sleepy ballade went before it whirls down the Mississippi and into the blue jungle in a cloud of pot. At their best Heavy Hands has an unparalleled coolness, a bit like Creedence covrer Black Sabbath with Hunter S. Thompson as a mentor and Hell's Angels as a result, but in the more static moments (Before It Takes Hold, No.6, I stand accused) is Smoke Signals more than pastisj over something that has been.

- Review translanted from norwegain by google from Groove.no



On the fine Language of Stone (www.languageofstone.com) vinyl LP SMOKE SIGNALS, the late-60s inspired power trio Heavy Hands comes across as a younger sibling of Highway Robbery, Dragonfly or one of those generic turn-of-the-60s/70s Detroit proto-metal bands. However, this storming recording burns with the intensity of most live recordings and that’s the whole difference. Strangely, Heavy Hands’ musicians exhibit so few signs of any post-punk influences that it gives the LP a fetishistic nature, somewhat like hanging out with a lost airman from WW2 who never found out the war was over. Hey, that’s it; these druids sound like early ‘70s German or Danish rockers. No Grunge, no Stoner, nuthin’! Now, anything that spooky is worthy of investigation! - Julian Cope, Head Heritage



Heavy Hands' debut is psychedelic rock, early 21st century style -- certainly indebted to some past influences that knowledgeable fans can detect and name-drop, but with a certain loose diffidence that marks it as a product of a different age. That kind of almost offhand, winsome casualness is especially evident in the vocals, which refreshingly lack the earnest bluster of so many guys who try to pace hard rock/psychedelic crossover outfits, past and present. It's also present to some extent in the playing, which has a bit of the jammy flavor you might expect of a latter-day psych group, but reins it in with more structure and focus. In these respects they might be seen as throwbacks to some of the work by late-'60s/early-'70s bands like Blue Cheer and SRC, who weren't quite metal or flower power. You can throw a little Doors, Hendrix, and Yardbirds into the pot, too (especially as a few of the passages bring to mind the kind of extrapolations the Yardbirds put into "Smokestack Lightning"). Yet while Heavy Hands mix power chording and guitar leads with a distorted tone into their psychedelic hard rock with skill, the best riffs on Smoke Signals aren't quite up to those bands' level. The record's not overtly trying to match those sounds, however, which is a good thing. - Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

Years ago, this is what I'd hoped for when laying an ear to "stoner rock", "stoner metal" or whatever it was called…except the poor chemically-bedazzled lads in the groups I was being exposed to seemed far too lysergically stunned to figure out how a song goes together. After a dozen pretty pitiful examples, I moved on to brighter genre fields. Therefore, never having properly grooved into the slot, if that was even possible with those materials, I've no clue whether Heavy Hands would be considered in league with that brief movement, but Smoke Signals definitely stoner music, way psychedelic, and 100% pure 70s right on down to the power trio configuration. That is, these guys nail what the others couldn't find with a map.



The promo literature pejoratively mis-states history in saying that the Hands' psychedelia updates the hallowed sound, making it "relevant". I beg to disagree, as the band basically reifies exactly what some of the lesser-known but very cool groups of the era (Dust, Blue Cheer, Sir Lord Baltimore, T.2., etc.) were engaged in&msadh;and what was relevant then is relevant now. I mean, this is a great example of dead-on re-evocation. Garagey, echoey, fuzzed-out, stripped down, and faithful to what was metal by way of blown-out psych, Smoke Signals is largely instrumental variations on basic themes triangulating all around the chord changes and hash-dripping leads. There are indeed vocals, unpolished, but, just like a lot of the material from the day, they're secondary, a way of inserting the human voice in there somewhere.



The front liner is blank except for the Eastern-cum-PreColumbian-cum-Aleut art on the cover, and the rear liner credits everyone but the band members…who it turns out are Ambassador Hazy (Guitar, vox), Mystical Revelation (bass), and Cristal Voyager (drums). To the groups I've already mentioned, add Grand Funk Railroad (mostly in the drums), and random portions of Amon Duul II, Clear Blue Sky, Stray Dog, and the fringier ensembles of the heyday of the sound. It's entirely appropriate that Heavy Hands is appearing on the Language of Stone label, which features a lot of experimental prog but, in this group's case, travels back to when all the experimentation started.

- Mark S. Tucker, FAME review