Big Oaf Bring The Thunder For Raucous New Record

Introducing BIG OAF from Atlanta, Georgia, the band with a name you just gotta love because it matches the stride of their swagger. Formed by brothers Crew Gibbs (guitar, vox) and Graham Gibbs (drums) in 2016, the pair were joined by bassist Matt Whiteside a year later. From there, the power trio went to work forging its sound in the fertile soil of the Atlanta heavy music scene, which has delivered no small share of wonders – from breakthrough and crossover acts like Mastodon, Black Tusk, Kylesa, Whores. and Royal Thunder, to savage undergrounders such as Zoroaster, Order of the Owl, Demonauta, GRUU, Sons of Tonatiuh, and Negative Wall.

Big Oaf started life as a purely instrumental proposition, but as their songs evolved over several years of live performances, the trio decided adding vocals was the right choice. How right they were! One thing led to another and by early 2020 Big Oaf teamed up with recording engineer CJ Ridings to lay down some tracks. COVID-19 threatened to put a kink in the works, but the band persisted, wrapping up their eponymous record over the summer months. Let’s explore it, shall we?

Opening track “Elephant” comes barreling through the gate like a crazed pachyderm on the lam, full of guts and glory. After travelling a pathway of atonal broken chords, everything grinds down to a mammoth’s pace, while the singer warns: “you ain’t built for this kind / the elephant in the room.”

“Chew” is the song that convinced Doomed & Stoned to host the Big Oaf premiere. Its opening riff is staunchly Sabbathesque, but takes on a melancholy turn. Crew Gibbs sings with plenty of heart, reminding me at times of King Buzzo, and with humor that’s just as dire: “I told you I’d eat you / you taste like a rat.”

Without missing a beat, Big Oaf lumber ahead with “Shove.” I can almost picture some drug-addled drunk pushing his way into bars, stomping through clubs, getting into fights with randos, and generally becoming a belligerent pain in the rear as dusk turns to dawn.

We find ourselves smack dab in the middle of “Nowhere” next, perhaps in some kind of a psychogenic fugue, boxing our way back through uncertain times to regain a sense of safety, stability, normality. The power of wordless songs is they have a tendency to direct one’s imagination towards some awfully strange places.

Crew’s rough and rumble vocals greet us again at the beginning of “Tooth and Claw,” backed by a sawing riff that sears right into your noggin with surgical precision.

Stripped raw
Tooth and Claw
We all fall
To nature’s law

“Antswarm” rouses a mean nest of fire ants – a source of endless fascination for me as a kid growing up in Texas. After a good rain, you’d see ‘em scurrying out of their hovel like clockwork to rebuild the foundations of the nest. Once I was posing for a picture on a family trip to neighboring Louisiana when a swarm of those fuckers crawled up my legs and started stinging me all over. I had to strip down to my undies in front of God and (worse) my parents just to get them off of me.

The jammin’ “G.H.T.S” (which is an abbreviation for something, not quite sure) rushes in next and by the time “Never Learned” cues up, we’re connecting with our emotions – deep, red, and raw.

I am driving nails in my coffin
Standing in my grave (my grave)
Circumstance has led me to this place
Never learned how to behave

The tempo increases midway through, emassing speed and power as it chugs along like a steam-driven locomotive with a mind of its own. We’re not quite sure if this one will come to a graceful end, either, as it breaks away. I envision a ton of moshing going down to this song.

Perhaps the secret to Big Oaf’s appeal throughout the record is they don’t stop.  The massive assault comes off much like I imagine one of Big Oaf’s live sets would, sans interruptions for tuning and the like. This is one to take with you to the gym (if and when you return). It makes me want to start pumping iron again…well almost/maybe not.

“King Of Town” restores my faith in the riff. As a reviewer, you just hear so much stuff that sounds alike, so I love when a band charges forward with spontaneity, confidence, and vigor. The start-stop sequences feel like they could stand in for a defibrillator, if needed. I can see the advertising slogan now: “Big Oaf: guaranteed to restart any heart.”

The album comes to a crashing conclusion with “Hangover,” a song that simply refuses to go down in a katzenjammer…not without a fight (or at little more hair of the dog).

I”m too drunk to get up
Leave me here, I’m just fucked
Slave to what’s in my cup
Pushing my fuckin’ luck
Forever hungover

As the material would suggest, the Big Oaf is just itching to hit the stage again. The band relayed this to us:

The feel we are going for with the album was to keep it as raw as we would play it live. We wanted to really give people the range of our energy but also to be unapologetically heavy. Though our influences are present in pieces of songs, we want this first record to be a taste of what’s to come. As we write this now there are several new songs that are well into development. This is the first record, but not the last. We have big fat plans for much much more.“

Big ups to Big Oaf on a smoking hot debut, which will be released digitally on Friday, November 13th and on a limited run of 100 red vinyl in January (pre-order here). For fans of Mastodon, High on Fire, Big Business, Melvins, and (of course) Black Sabbath.

Give ear…