Big Business

When Big Business began as a fuzzy bass/drum duo, it compensated for its lack of numbers with volume and sweat, coming off like Lightning Bolt bashing through Sleep's hourlong Jerusalem record in twenty minutes. Now a guitar-augmented trio that occasionally flirts with a fourth member, the band is heavier but no less agile. It still plays like a two-piece with something to prove. The difference is subtle but significant; it was previously a noise-rock group with a soft spot for Ozzy, but now Big Business sounds like a stoner-metal band that forgot to get high.

Last May: The band's founding members Coady Willis and Jared Warren played the Firebird — not as Big Business, but as two-fifths of sludge-metal legend the Melvins' current lineup.