Heavier Than Thou

During the years that Saint Vitus was signed to SST, the Southern California doom metal outfit was largely misunderstood. Though SST\'s owners loved the band for its deranged take on Black Sabbath, the label’s punk-oriented audience loathed it. Meanwhile, the metal community shunned St. Vitus in favor of high-octane acts like Slayer. Nevertheless, by sticking to its uncompromising vision Saint Vitus eventually found a diehard cult audience, and its early SST work came to be revered as a canonical blueprint for doom metal. *Heavier Than Thou* covers the band’s entire tenure on SST, from 1984 to 1988. The last four songs represent the early garage-born years with vocalist Scott Reagers; the epochal “Saint Vitus” is the defining work of that period. But the band’s legend is staked on the first 10 songs here, which highlight the 1986 arrival of Scott “Wino” Weinrich: an eventual idol in metal circles. With Wino in charge, songs like “Clear Windowpane,” “Born Too Late,\" and “Dying Inside” defined a vision of heavy metal equally informed by Black Sabbath\'s medieval blues and Black Flag\'s violent eruptions.

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