Godsized: Heavy Lies The Crown

Britain’s biker rockers fail to find any shade

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Often compared to Black Label Society, the problem with Godsized is that they’re a far better band than they seem prepared to show here. The foursome are so intent on keeping all pedals pressed firmly to the floor that they do neither themselves nor the songs true justice.

It all works well on petrol-pumping plunges like Welcome To Hell or Never A Better Time, when getting right in your face is exactly what’s required, but things fall down as soon as something more supple is required.

You hear the problem on Push Against The Tide and Web Of Lies. These demand a touch of flexibility to allow the groove to open up, but instead they get buried in a rampant, breathless assault. Annoyingly, just when you’re about to give up on the album, Godsized deliver Pay Your Debt, when it all comes together brilliantly.

Suddenly they’re more like early Whitesnake, dismissing a tiresomely dominant tendency for over-amped biker frenzy. Heavy Lies The Crown doesn’t lack for potential, but it’s too rarely realised./o:p

Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021