The HU

Anyone heard of these guys? They are influenced by rock/metal but perform almost entirely with traditional Mongolian instruments. It's weird because there is not much distortion or conventional "metal" sounds, but the overall attitude does seem to align with the genre. And the Mongolian "throat singing" technique serves it well too.

They are playing here in Boston tonight, so I'm going to check out the show. I'm not sure I would listen to a full album of this, but it should be interesting to see in a live setting.

I like it for a song or two, kind of like Tengger Cavalry, but then it wears on me but a concert might be fun.

Yeah I've liked those two tracks for a while. I thought we had a thread about them here somewhere...

I haven't listened to them. I did see that they have recently announced a show in my area in Nov.

tohostudios wrote:

Yeah I've liked those two tracks for a while.  I thought we had a thread about them here somewhere...

Yeah, we discussed them a while back.

I dig what I've heard, and I'll probably pick the album up at some point. Don't think it's something I could listen to straight through all the time, but I generally listen to everything on shuffle, so a song here and there as I genre jump listening to tunes...yeah, that'd work fine. It's definitely cool.

I must have missed that thread. It'll be interesting to see what kind of draw they get here in the US.

The mid-sized venue they played at here in Boston was packed near capacity last night with a very diverse crowd, from college students to office workers. They put on a good show. Even if you didn't know the songs it was easy to get into, and their set was varied enough that it never became boring.

Did they use those weird Mongolian instruments that are in the videos?  I was curious whether those things were actually making the sounds in the music.

BTW I think I commented in the other thread that I'd say this music has a "metal attitude" without actually being metal; there's just something "metal-ish" about it.

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Did they use those weird Mongolian instruments that are in the videos?  I was curious whether those things were actually making the sounds in the music.

They did. I think the most prominent one is the morin khuur or "horsehead fiddle." It looks like it only has two strings, so it's pretty incredible what kind of sounds they can get out of it. And now that I think about it, one of the videos seemed to have a standard electric guitar in it (played by one of the guys in the background) which I assumed was just to fill out the sound. But I definitely did not spot one at all at the show. it was all traditional instruments, I think, aside from the drum set.

I definitely get what you mean about the "metal attitude." Especially because there is not really any distortion or effects added to the instruments. They all sound rather acoustic on their own, but cumulatively obtain something very metal sounding. That, and I think the vocal style serendipitously parallels the kind of effect that metal bands that use "growling" vocals are after.

Definitely parallels the metal genre, and closely.

Given their wide appeal, it would seem to make a lot of marketing sense to put them on a bill with a more standard metal band. Heck, they could have easily been one of the earlier slots on the Slayer farewell tour. It seems like they would bring in people who might not otherwise go.

If nothing else, The Hu deserve massive kudos for their videos.

Every time I watch those I'm amazed; they had to have spent a lot of money on those because they look amazing.

I checked out another video from their full length:



I think I'm going to order this album as a download just to drive my neighbors nuts. As if listening to Therion in the car wasn't enough...

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I think I'm going to order this album as a download just to drive my neighbors nuts. As if listening to Therion in the car wasn't enough...

I also like this one, which only has a lyric video. It's what they open their show with:

That's a good tune!

Off to Amazon...

Just downloaded the album.

I'm curious GP, how did you feel their performance was received?

I'm listening to my download and so far everything sounds basically like I expected.  But I do find that listening to music sung in a foreign language gets tiresome after a while.

But there is just something "metal" about this music and I can't put my finger on it. It's not the gruff throat-singing vocals, it's something else.

I think the performance was really well received overall. Part of it is the visual (the look of the instruments, plus the over-the-top costuming, same as in the videos); but they also are pretty engaging, even though it was clear they don't know more than a handful of words in English.

Yeah how did that language thing work in a concert setting? Was there any "banter" at all? Or did they just "announce" each song then launch into it?

If they didn't have much crowd interaction I think they should consider hiring a roadie or somebody to translate for them; let whoever is the main "talker" for the band speak Mongolian to the audience but have somebody up there to translate for him.

Now that I've typed that, it occurs to me I don't think I've ever seen that in music. You see it in sports all the time; players who don't feel comfortable speaking English while being interviewed have translators who travel with the team.

Well they didn't have to do a lot of work, as the crowd was chanting "Hu-Hu-Hu" between practically every song. And sometimes the drummer would start hitting the kick pedal to that and getting faster and faster. Other times the lead singer just spoke in Mongolian and nobody had any idea what he was saying (it was very brief, always) until he mentioned something recognizable, like "Ghenghis Khan." Now that I think about it, some of their appeal might be the "exotic" flavor of the whole thing. Not speaking in English might actually work to their favor in that regard.