Huron CD REVIEW: Huron “War Party” EP Published Tuesday, May 29, 2012 By Saj Perez. Under CD Review, Editor: Jacqueline Parker, Writer: Saj Perez Tags: CD Review, Huron, UK, War Party EP

There is nothing quite like having a nice groove in a metal song. Sure, as a metal head, I love a straightforward blast beat as much as the next head banger, but there is something about that GROOVE that just makes your whole body bang. Huron, from the United Kingdom, definitely have that in spades.

If you hear their earlier stuff, it’s a straight-up tribute to Pantera, the fathers of groove-metal. No one wrote a better metal groove than Pantera, and while Huron tried to do their best impersonation, it just fell flat. Thankfully, in their new EP War Party, Huron has shed their Pantera-tribute skin and crafted four songs that stand alone.

Kicking it off with “Fight for your Life,” the band wasted little time in getting into the meat of their music, with a hummable riff that sticks to you like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth. Singer Sean Kenivel comes in with a kick to the gut, an almost Southern-like snarl that immediately brings you into Huron’s musical world. His distinguishable voice seems to bridge the metal underground with an almost Five Finger Death Punch/Godsmack vibe to it, while making it his own. It may seem familiar but it stands out nonetheless.

The riff work in “Mercy Killing” by Neil Sims and Rimmy Sinclair shows that these guys know how to write riffs to get the body moving. It’s simplistic in that it’s not a bunch of riffage forced into a song, a trend that seems to have taken the metal world by storm but creates a mess for the fans. It’s simple meat and potatoes riffage, and you never get lost in the song. It’s basic and that’s a great thing.

The other two songs, “Room 174” and “Bite the Kerb,” have the same adrenaline rush the rest of the EP shows. Sure, the EP has only four songs but they come at you quick and stick with you. You aren’t bogged down by numerous time changes, interlude pieces, or unnecessary riffs. There’s nary a piece of musical fat on this. It’s pure muscle.

The most obvious thing for me is the production quality. It has most definitely stepped up since their previous album Mary Celeste, which sounded like it was mixed and mastered with the intent of it sounding like it was recorded underwater.

Huron is a band poised to make a big splash here in America. There’s not much negative to say about this record, other than that it’s only four songs. Hopefully there won’t be too much of a gap in releases so more people can be exposed to Huron, a band that does modern metal the way it’s intended.

Time Signature Metal in metal out...

Genre: groove metal

While I love groove metal - especially, groove thrash metal, my general impression is that, apart from Pantera, Invocator, Adrenaline Mob and a couple of other acts, a lot of groove metal acts are terribly unoriginal and often, to varying extents, sound like Pantera rip-offs.

Fortunately, while the Pantera influence is quite obvious (especially in the vocals which sound like something in between Phil Anselmo and are more Russell Allen or Apollo Papathanasio (mostly on the Anselmo side, though), while not quite in the same league as the above-mentioned artists, Huron have their own sound and do not come across as mere Pantera rip-offs.

The album starts out with a slow and heavy doom section, and, for a moment, I thought I was in for a slab of doom metal; however, the track soon morphed into an uptempo thrash metal track with lots of southern groove and street attitude, and this pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album. What I particularly like about this release is that Huron combine the groove of southern metal with more traditional uptempo trash metal, and there are also elements which are reminiscent of death metal every now and then. It is this blend of impressions that makes Huron stand out to me as being a quite original groove metal act at the end of the day.

While I think that this is a fine album overall, I do have some reservations. One is that I think that the vocals could be a little less Anselmo and a little more Palmer. Also, the drums sound very hollow and mechanical at times - this has nothing with the drumming itself to do, I think, but is a matter of production. When it all comes down, I think that the problem is a matter of the drums being to pristine and clean-sounding in comparison with the sound of the other instrumentation, which actually has some raw and dirty qualities to it.

Overall, "Mary Celeste" is, not a flawless, but a quite solid groove metal release which reminds us that groove metal can be original, and that you can draw on thrash metal and southern metal without having to sound like a Pantera clone. If you like your metal thrashy and groovy, give this album a listen.