THE HU
UNDERWORLD, LONDON Mongolian wizards have a ball in North London
OUT ON The steppe, something is stirring. Mongolia’s rising stars
The hu are sweeping all before them, with 30 million YouTube views for the singles Yuve Yuve Yu and Wolf Totem, a rapturously received Download festival debut performance, and now a sold-out UK tour. The Underworld is rammed, the crowd are chanting “Hu! Hu! Hu!” a good 15 minutes before they’re due onstage, and the air is thick with expectation.
The Hu’s usual four-piece line-up has been heavily augmented for these dates, with a guitarist, bass player and drummer giving the traditional Mongolian instruments a steely backbone. It’s still folk music, with songs that celebrate rhythm rather than riff, but it’s imbued with a rare, metallic intensity. Recent single Shoog Shoog starts the ball rolling, followed by a seven-strong run of songs that haven’t been released yet, and yet the momentum never sags. The morin khuur (horse head violin) wails like a country fiddle, the throat singing feels almost otherworldly, and frontmen Gala and Jaya engage with the crowd in a distinctly Western style: “Are you having fun?” roars Gala, before the galloping Uchirtai Gurav. The two ‘hits’ rush by in a blur of wild, cinematic soloing and wilder audience reaction, and The Great Chinggis Khaan is a sweeping epic, Jaya leaning into the mic, as if facing the teeth of a gale.
It’s a mantra laced with mystery and tumult, the sort of song Kashmir might have been had Led Zeppelin headed off to Central Asia instead of Northern Africa. It all ends with a final canter through This Is The Mongol.
It’s remarkable music. These are songs that somehow reflect the wide-open beauty of the Mongolian landscape, steeped in history and legend. They’re songs that conjure up images of fierce storms and ferocious battles. And the fact that they’re making a connection with a room full of metalheads in a venue 7000km from Ulaanbaatar is testament to their power. The Hu aren’t metal – at least by any traditional definition – but they might just be the most metal band of 2019.