Sever The Wicked Hand

From the booming, anticipatory chords of album opener “Isolation (Desperation)” to the glacial, thundering death rattle of closer “Symbiosis,” Sever The Wicked Handis nothing short of a triumph—both musically and personally. “I gave up drugs and alcohol back in August,” Windstein explains, “so it was a cool experience writing and singing everything completely sober. I’ve pretty much always done my guitar tracks without beer, but when I would sing, I would get tanked. This time it was a very different emotional experience doing it with a clear head, especially because so many lyrics on this record are very personal. I was nervous about it, but it worked out really well.” Indeed, most of the songs on Sever The Wicked Hand detail the various physical and psychological aspects of Windstein’s sobriety process. “It’s not a concept record, but it’s definitely got a theme,” he clarifies. “Sever The Wicked Hand is just a metaphor for cutting anything negative out of your life. Obviously, it can be the hand that pulls the beer to your mouth, the hand that holds the straw to your nose, the hand that pops the pill in. It could be getting rid of a bad relationship, a bad friendship—anything that brings negativity to your life in any way. It’s about getting rid of that and moving forward.”

Given Kirk Windstein's busy schedule as a member of the highly successful Down and persistent reports about his struggles with alcohol abuse, the prospects of his original band, Crowbar, ever releasing another album looked relatively grim during the second half of the 2000s.

So let me get this straight. For two decades a self-medicated Kirk Windstein (vocals/guitar) was making with CROWBAR some of the most enormously riffed, supremely composed NOLA misery metal albums ever recorded, up to and including 2005's "Lifesblood For The Downtrodden". Then the guy gets clean and...

A review of Crowbar - Sever the Wicked Hand, out now worldwide via Century Media records and E1 Records.