SHEAVY — Celestial Hi-Fi (review)

Album · 2000 · Stoner Metal

4.5/5 · 2011-10-17
Kingcrimsonprog

Sheavy (sometimes typeset as sHeavy, to emphasise their heaviness) are a long running Canadaian Stoner Rock/Metal act. The band are vastly underrated but no less of an important contributor to the genre. While they may not have become as successful as some of their American peers, the band are still worth checking out and have released a wealth of really strong albums.

Celestial Hi-Fi was their third full-length studio album and was released in 2000, which became one of their better loved albums even as the scene which spawned them was fast disappearing from media attention. It was the second of four albums to feature Steve Hennessey, Dan Moore, Keith Foley and Ren Squires in the line-up at the hight of the band’s stability and initial push.

If you like creative and interesting bands like Fu Manchu, Kyuss, The Atomic Bitchwax, Dozer or even Clutch then Sheavy are a perfect outfit to discover and explore. Black Sabbath inspired grooves and warm desert feel are both very much in evidence on Celestial Hi-Fi.

In fact, if you do like Sabbath then the vocals of in particular may interest you, as Singer Steve Hennessey sometimes does an incredible job of specifically mimicking Ozzy Osbourne, right down to some of the exact nuances, although on this album he did start developing more of his own style at times as well.

On Celestial Hi-Fi the band stopped splitting their time between track styles as much and instead delivered more six-and-a-half minute tracks which covered all of the band’s styles in one. This album definitely features more groovy and melodic up-tempo buzzy rockers than their earlier work did, but still has a few of the slower doomy numbers for variety. If you are the type of person who finds that music can conjure up imagery; this is very much an album that you can picture being heard in front of a warm orange sunset rather than beside a rain-soaked window overlooking a bleak industrial cityscape.

As with all the band’s albums, the record is full of impressive guitar solos. This album in particular almost never stops delivering lead guitar moments in some form or another.

There are many album highlights including the amazingly catchy ‘What’s Up Mr. Zero?’ which is one of the band’s best songs to date, as well as the Title Track and ‘Gemini (The Twins)’ however there is no real let-up in quality and the album is fantastic from beginning to end, there aren’t any skipable tracks and everything on the record is as melodically strong as eachother. Overall Celestial Hi-Fi is another enjoyable collection of warm, analogue sounding Stoner Rock/Metal tracks from Sheavy, continuing on their upward trajectory in terms of quality and increasing originality. Celestial Hi-Fi is unquestionably one of the band’s best albums and if you enjoy it check out the band’s previous, more Sabbathy effort The Electric Sleep too. I highly recommend both albums to fans of the aforementioned bands of the genre as a whole.