For Kelv Swaby and the other members of England’s The Heavy, who play at Velvet Jones on Monday, April 25, the past four years have been, in a word, heavy. “We all went through a ton of shit – [guitarist] Dan [Taylor] and I went through so many personal changes, some of which would have broken many people,” he said. For Swaby, this included a divorce, and the subsequent re-evaluation and re-establishment of relationships. “Between all of that there was some horrible personal shit to deal with… and figuring out the relationship, what it was that you wanted from this, what you didn’t need from it, and what you believed you were gonna get from it.”
It’s these trying and challenging experiences – and the way the band bounced back from them – that shaped the name of their newest album, Hurt & The Merciless. “Whatever shit has been thrown at you, however many amounts of hurt has been thrown at you, the way we deal with it is mercilessly. You’re gonna be alright, you’re gonna be alright, we’re still standing, we’re still standing,” he said. “And we thought Hurt & The Merciless sanded like a pretty badass spaghetti western.”
Badass would be a good word to describe their newest, in which the band belts out blues-y and gloriously gospel-inflected rock songs with some of the biggest choruses and loudest blasts of brass of their career. The band’s sound has always been a distillation of the American culture that filled TV screens and radio airwaves in the band’s youth. “When we were growing up, British culture was steeped with American culture – there were westerns on every weekend, and on American TV shows some of the most incredible music would be playing,” Swaby recalls. Blues-rock, gospel, garage punk, bebop and rock steady – all manner of music can be heard in the explosive power of The Heavy.