The Heavy

First conceived in Bath, Somerset in 2007 – with guitarist Dan Taylor and lead vocalist Kelvin Swaby meeting in 1998 and forming an alliance over vintage R&B and Jim Jarmusch films – retro-loving rock 'n' soul-ers The Heavy dropped their first pair of singles that same year and were snapped up by UK indie favorite Ninja Tune. Comprising the aforementioned pair, along with bass player Spencer Page and drummer Chris Ellul, the band set about releasing their debut album, Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, which was released on September 17, 2007 in the UK and on April 8, 2008 in the US. With the album's title making a reference to a quote from Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, The Heavy went on to forge an affinity with the silver screen. Mixing grimy garage rock with the bright horns and rich vocals of neo-soul, "How You Like Me Now?" from The Heavy's second album The House That Dirt Built (2009) wound up in various video games and films, including 2010 US biographical sports drama film The Fighter and 2011 US black comedy Horrible Bosses. "Short Change Hero," from the same album, was also used in TV shows The Vampire Diaries, The Listener, Suits and Killjoys and the trailer for Batman: Arkham City. The band continued to mine their soul-drenched blues-rock sound for their third album The Glorious Dead (2012), which snuck into the Billboard 200 at Number 191. Album track "What Makes A Good Man?" showed up in the launch trailer of action-adventure video game Sleeping Dogs and "Same Ol'" brought their aesthetic full circle with a spot in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. The Heavy released their fourth album Hurt & the Merciless in 2016 and fifth album Sons arrived three years later. Sons' track "Better As One" was used in the 2019 film Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.