The Heavy

The Heavy’s osmosis rise was swift. Within a year of their 2007 debut album Great Vengeance And Furious Fire the band made waves Stateside, tipped by the likes of Rolling Stone and SPIN, then a live performance of ‘How You Like Me Now?’ - the lead single from 2009’s The House That Dirt Built - on The Late Show With David Letterman punted them straight into the American psyche. The track was selected to soundtrack a 2010 Super Bowl commercial, and feature in Mark Wahlberg’s sports drama The Fighter. Before long the song was all over US culture. It became so ubiquitous that it was played over the speakers at Barack Obama’s HQ to declare his victory in the 2012 Presidential election. The Heavy’s infiltration of the global subconscious was only beginning. ‘Short Change Hero’, also from the album, became a TV sync mainstay, reached new generations as the theme to Batman: Arkham City and several Borderlands video games, and even made it into real-life battle zones with the US Special Forces. 2012’s third album The Glorious Dead catapulted tracks including ‘Same ‘Ol’ and ‘What Makes A Good Man?’ onto adverts, TV shows, and the trailer for Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. The band expanded the scope and ambition of their sound over 2016’s Hurt & The Merciless and 2019’s Sons. They return in 2023 with their sixth album AMEN, an exhilarating maelstrom of ‘60s R&B riffs, horns, and gospel harmonies, which is set to be the freshest and most revitalised record in their canon yet.