Closing In

Album Review

Those who have held a Gibson SG in their hands, felt the warm buzz of an overdriven Peavy guitar combo amp breathing against the backs of their legs, and let loose with a windmill motion on the only chord they knew how to play will no doubt recognize the mission of Columbus, OH's Early Man. If their bio is to be taken literally, guitarist/vocalist Mike Conte and drummer Adam Bennati (insert inevitable "White Stripes of heavy metal" blurb here) were sheltered from the sinful world of rock & roll by their fundamentalist Pentecostal families until the age of 19. It was then that they found the Antichrist in the tomes of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and like good and pious disciples, applied the metal gods' lessons — and more importantly, their sound — to their rebirth. On their Matador debut, Early Man take up the mantle of primal '70s hard rock with such dogmatic intensity that you would swear the stories are true. Closing In is Paranoid-era Sabbath through and through. Simplistic heavy riffs and nihilistic imagery are delivered with the kind of ferocity that can only come from being locked in your basement during puberty by your hellfire- and brimstone-emitting parents, although the album could use a bit of irony and wears its influences like a bat in its mouth.