Despite everything, the early years of the history of the USA were a period of emancipation. There hadn’t been a comparable break with estate-based society in the annals of the West. This gave rise to a new challenge: to hold elements together that weren’t connected by a shared past. On their third album, Huntsmen mime this Herculean task. »The Dry Land« not only borrows poetically from the epoch of Thoreau, Whitman an Emily Dickinson. First and foremost, it is heterogenous like American society in its early phase on a musical level. »The Dry Land« is an explosive mix of Americana, Doom Metal, Post Rock, Blackgaze and Folk. »In Time, All Things«, for instance, starts with a Black Metal crescendo. It transforms into an acoustic Folk melody. The soft voice of singer Aimee Bueno-Knipe hovers above it. A male counterpart tunes in, simultaneous with some Doom riffs. Slow build-up. A stanza recited Prog style follows, bridge, guttural screams, Hardcore riffs – only to be skillfully discharged into the thunderous opening motive. On paper, this shouldn’t work. Yet, Huntsmen managed to bag a splendid specimen with a surprising amount of replayability via shrewd songwriting and thematic acuity. As an attempt to forge new kinds of coherence, it’s a lesson in democracy. In any case, after I had the promo one and a half months, it’s one of my most listened to albums of 2024 so far
Lord Spikeheart
The Adept
Haekalu