It’s a simple fact that I don’t listen to as much music as I would like to, and when I do, it’s frequently my old favourites that get time on the player, and unlike some fellow scribes I don’t go searching out for new acts and rare releases, being happy to let the editors of this site send me albums by bands I’ve never heard of before. Sometimes that leads to me getting a CD so bad it gets one play before being recycled as a coaster. Others are gems I would never find myself, and get onto my regular play list. ‘Hail The Horde’ by The Burning finds itself peppered with tracks firmly in the latter category.
A groove metal/hardcore/thrash four piece from Aarhus City in Denmark, the harsh vocals of scary looking front man Johnny Haven have something that I look for in my metal, namely the ability to be understood! Many bands with the word “core” in their particular sub-genre, be they “hardcore”, “metalcore”, “mathcore”, or “applecore” (okay, I just made that one up) are so busy concentrating on screaming and croaking that any actual lyrics are reduced to a stream of redundant noises. This is not the case here, and by being decipherable, the anger comes out not just in the sound, but in the words.
Album opener ‘Godless’ sets the tone for the whole album, the bass being heavy and reverberating, the groove matched by the Pantera-esque guitars of Alex the Kid, and the pounding drums of Toby Hoest, all bound together into an attack on the oppressiveness of organised religion. This same all out attack fires out of the speakers for track after track, ‘The Nihilist Life’ racing along with a more traditional thrash riff that should have pits spinning. Surprisingly the title track, ‘Hail the Horde’ has a more traditional metal opening with the chant of “fire at will”, played over a stamp along guitar, before the harder screams pile into the mix. Nods to other bands abound, be it in the Kerry King buzzsaw guitar riff of ‘Inverted Cross Syndrome’, or the down tuned doom laden opening of ‘Metamorphosis’, mixed with The Burning’s own angry delivery. Even a bit of Down’s stoner delivery seeps into the album with a track that could describe the genesis of Phil Anselmo, ‘Baptized in Bongwater.’
I may never have heard of The Burning before, but on the strength of this album, I’m definitely going to look to see them live.
http://www.myspace.com/theburningdk
http://www.theburning.dk
