HEROS SEVERUM
Wonderful Educated Bear (Two Sheds Music)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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Some folks like their gravy thick, their peanut butter chunky and vanilla milkshakes you couldn't suck through a straw with an industrial strength vacuum. To all of those people I say, yeah, go ahead! Don't let me stop you, just because I like mine thin, creamy and closer to milk than cheese. We live in a country founded on a freedom of choice after all, and no one is ordering for you.

If the above description fits you, at the menu of the musical dinner I'd suggest a healthy dose of Heros Severum's album "Wonderful Educated Bear." The percussion is thick, the guitars are chunky and the vocals, featuring male/female interplay, are chill going down. Singers Eric Friar and Sherryl Branch take turns shouting over each other in the thundering "Bear In the Circus" and are particularly sharp on the herky-jerky "Driving In A Perpetual Summer," sounding at their best like a strange marriage of Kate Pierson of the B-52's and the Minutemen's D.Boon. There are even moments of electronica mixed in for good measure, lending an almost ethereal drawl, but eventually all that is thin and creamy clenches its fist.

© 2002 - Erick Mertz