Have you ever listened to an album, and an image pops into your head of one of your friends? This is what happened to me when I popped in Spanish doomsters Horn Of The Rhino. Immediately, an image is conjured up of my mate, horrendously pissed, dancing to St. Vitus with an arse hanging out and his patched sleeveless denim jacket stretched tight across his shoulders and he waves his arms in the air. From this rather robust image, (and of course, being signed to a label called Doomentia), this is a band that likes their drinks strong and their guitars loud. Very loud.
Imagine, if you will, what would happen if Sleep woke up a bit, listened to a bit of High On Fire, and started drinking Stella instead of smoking weed all day long, and you’d have a good sense of what’s happening here. Not for this band moping about: ‘Mass Burial Punishment’ might be 10 minutes long, but they pack an awful lot of noise in their running time, with Motörhead speed-freak passages buttressing along nicely with prime-era Alice In Chains moments. And at this juncture, it might sound ridiculous to say there’s a moment where they briefly emulate Meshuggah, in this case it actually carries weight.
Here now will be a brief interlude where I compare parts of this record to Down, then hate myself for yet another comparison with that band. Although only in this case ‘Sovereign’ goes over and above the call of duty, with a high keening vocal call that more correctly brings to mind Chris Cornell on a particularly stressfully productive day, particularly the one where he decided to rewrite ‘Slaves And Bulldozers’ to sound as though it crawled out of a swamp.
‘Southern Beast’ sounds just like when doom was first crawling out of Wino’s amp, albeit with rather more force that today’s production methods offer. And a song called ‘Brimstone Breath’ tells you everything you need to know, in a High On Fire kind of way, just what to expect from this record. In fact, ‘Weight Of Coronation’ could stand to toe with Crowbar and come off pretty well. My mate will be pleased, once he’s finished sewing on those Motörhead patches onto his jacket.
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