Zac Brown and the Boys Get Heavy With Chris Cornell's Help

The Zac Brown Band's hit on a winning formula by teaming up with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. Your result? Southern fried rock that requires multiple napkins to get the grease off your fingers. "Heavy Is The Head" lays down the lumber assuring you'll have somewhat of a knot in your head come morning. Need song storytelling to lighten up a graveyard? You've come to the right place..er...haunt. Zac's voice takes each gram of tension and whips it into a defiant froth. The way John Driskell Hopkins rips into his bass you'd think he and the great beyond's hallowed spirit world had an unbreakable connection to each other. Daniel de los Reyes drives home the dynamism behind the drum kit. Zac succeeds in making brain toasted narration sound compelling. You're not adopting the run screaming in the other direction pose. Zac's really going to town using his electric guitar as steady companion. "Heavy Is The Head" carries around the chip on the shoulder brash sneer you'd come to expect from a rowdy who's knocked back one too many brews down at the local watering hole. He inhabits a domain that doesn't lend itself well to piling out of the psychological debris accumulated over a down and dirty life. Zac has studied well at the feet of fellow Southern rock stalwarts Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers. Both acts were unapologetic about the warts beneath the biker dude surface. Coy Bowles lends his own commanding touch on guitar. You're not allowed to forget the agony creaking beneath the surface. Everybody involved wears it well. What's missing is that roaring campfire not to mention the toast ready marshmallows. Gathered around said flame Zac spins the yarn guaranteed to set your teeth on edge. Quality storytellers do that amazingly well. Behold the restless black dog drinking water, a cooling experience on his tongue. Rattling ghost chains loom large. Where might the cornstalk lightning be? I'm sure given time it'll make itself known somehow. The king's blood spills across the queen's royal altar. There isn't bound to be a satisfying conclusion to this regal melodrama. Smack in the middle of this battle zone we receive a reminder of the group quest all of us are taking in one form or fashion. Second guessing decisions? Plenty of those to last many lifetimes. Pages of your life fill up. Where's the epiphany meant to drive the fog away and allow our true selves to merge with the fearful one? Zac sings the title sporting full on brood to leave no one doubting the pain he's sweating out. The ground on which His Majesty stands shifts violently. At any second the soils could swallow him up, putting him on a collision course with the dead and the secrets they shant reveal. "Heavy Is The Head" gets big time love for not alienating either the rock or country side of the ledger. You can bank on it pairing well with your malt liquor beer of choice. In fact Zac occupies the shoes of a tragic figure in no way dissimilar to the shrink played by Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. Zac's deceptively haunting as was the shrink when we realized he himself was an apparition Haley Joel Osment was gifted (odd word) for his ability to see clear as a bell. "Heavy Is The Head" was born to be chugged down hard and yes, extremely heavy. Zac and Chris do make a blissfully compatible match. I salute them for giving it a shot.