By Jase Walker
Today is a day I’m thankful that a storm didn’t absolutely paralyse cross-country travel as it has done before because tonight’s show is a real special one. It’s time for the return of Mongolian rock/metal sensation, The HU. They’re fully in their stride with touring all over the world on a regular basis far from their home of Ulan Bataar and selling out shows wherever they go now, bringing their unique mix of Mongolian folk and rock to steadily bigger crowds every time.
For the tour they’ve brought along Skáld who I’ve not come across before but if they’re good enough to tour with The Hu then I don’t doubt I’ll be enjoying them too.
The first thing I notice when walking into the venue is the rather interesting looking drum kit that has two large leather drums suspended above them. Sadly, my folk instrument knowledge lets me down here as I don’t know the exact names of them, whoops. I should have figured that they’d walk on with a huge incense burner too.
The band takes the stage and this is definitely something less than traditional when it comes to your average performance here. Quite a significant amount of percussion with what appears to be a viola providing the main melody as a somewhat distorted voice booms from the stage.
I had to do a quick check on what language they’re using and apparently they tend to use Old Norse which is pretty cool. It’s hard not to draw parallels with the likes of Heilung or Sowulo given the strong pagan influences but these seem to err much more heavily on the side of the rhythmic elements. Much like their headliner act, these also use copious amounts of throat singing to act as a bass tone for a lot of the vocal melodies.
I’m not totally convinced there aren’t some backing tracks in use here given some of the extra melodies that I can hear but can’t quite pinpoint. Not like that’s a deal breaker or anything but I do like to have a solid handle on whoa doing what when I see bands live.
Legitimately, though, I’m really enjoying this show and it feels overall much more engaging than the likes of Heilung as it comes off that they’ve not lost sight of being a musical performance over just an artistic statement with a performance attached. Excellent start.
The HU walk on stage, battle standard and all as the lights at the back slowly raise and bring up their banner. We are ready for the Mongolian invasion, and despite there being four core members, there’s so many people on stage that all help bring the live show to life.
Immediately from the start I’m reminded about how I thought that they shifted gears a bit at South Of Heaven last year but this headliner show really puts that into focus. What started as a band that felt a bit closer to Status Quo when they went viral, have now pulled in much stronger metal influences that no doubt reflect their worldwide travels and subsequent exposure to the wider world of heavy music.
The juxtaposition of more familiar instruments of guitars and drums against the Mongolian folk instruments is ever present when seeing these live as well.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these at a venue show as opposed to a festival slot and I’m in awe of how strong their sound is when contained to a room. Even the sound of the mouth harp is fully audible and not lost in the mix of an open air show that gets the sound blown around by the wind.
When we get to ‘Warrior Chant’, it’s easy to see how they’ve captured the imagination of so many people. A full room of people loudly chanting “Hu! Hu!’, nothing says more about how a band is seeing success quite in the way of so many sold out shows that I don’t doubt also spend a significant portion of the evening chanting the bands name.
I think what also surprises me as well is the amount of success they’ve seen while still maintaining their own language, it’s very often that bands end up switching to English as they find success in the wider world.
The Hu are unapologetically Mongolian, fiercely proud of their heritage and history and pay respect to it with every song they write and every show they play.
The switch to a more metal rooted sound has only strengthened their attractiveness to me. I feel like they’ve spent a lot of time watching the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Iron Maiden and all that good stuff and essentially said “fuck yeah we wanna do a bit of that”. It’s certainly amped up their live shows as well to say the least.
Of course as we move to the end of the set, the one-two punch of the songs that brought them to the world’s attention of ‘Yuve Yuve Yu’ and ‘Wolf Totem’ seem to be what a lot of people here have been patiently waiting for.
Finishing out the main set with ‘This Is Mongol’, if it’s not painfully obvious yet that they’re super proud of their history, I don’t know what else to tell you.
The HU are one of these bands that has completely exploded out of their homelands onto the world stage and made sure they did everything to secure their place on it. A real unique phenomenon amongst the rock and metal world and a fantastic experience to see live.
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