More GTL for the last gasp of summer: Crowbar

This September we've had an Indian Summer.  And it feels like August when I was in high school in the 90s.  I'm lifting weights and in the best shape I've been in over a decade.  I feel young again.  And for GTL I'm listening to some old Crowbar.


They don't make albums that sound like this anymore.

Crowbar is a band I never listened to as a teen, but I should have.  I spent too much money on crap albums back in the pre-internet era and didn't want to gamble on an album based on one Beavis and Butthead clip and Phil Anselmo's name on the back as producer.


Yeah what a fool I was.

This album is great for lifting weights.  Slow and angry.  And it takes me back and feels nostalgic, even though I didn't listen to it back in the day.  Just the sound of those drums without triggers, the fat guitars with scooped mids, the yelling vocals that don't growl, hiss, or scream. It feels like back before air conditioning was ubiquitous and summers felt hot.  Back before everything became extreme and the Scandanavian invasion and Death Metal rising.  Back in the day.  Summer.  Uncomfortably hot; t-shirt sticking to skin and beads of sweat on brow.  Even the air smells different when it isn't cooled, condensed, and filtered.  The smell of summer.

Summer's quickly fading.  The cool crisp in the evening feels like autumn.  The start of school.  Of days less hazy and halcyon.  Days of the rote monotony.