Friday, January 12, 2018

Horn - Retrograd 12"





Within the first thirty seconds of the first song, I was able to tell that I want to listen to this band. The pagan genre can easily come off as a redundant and cliché movement that has long since jumped its proverbial shark, however, it’s a mistake to overlook the genre for all its genuinely good bands.

Horn fits into that niche of good heathen metal music.  Its vibes are purely dark and esoteric. There are uplifting melodies that transition back and forth with a raw and almost serene barbarism; visions of ancient times conjured up by thick grassroots extreme metal riffs. The spirit of heathen culture is a  poetic struggle between life and death that ultimately ends in doom, which is why I strongly favor darker bands in this style. Horn doesn’t sacrifice the ancient gloom of medieval and dark times for epic shining ballads of virtue and valor, no, Horn reduces the genre to its primal architypes which is where it should stay rooted. 

They can do fast and they can do slow, combining elements of bludgeoning doom, hardcore melodeath, and black metal with their folkish spirit.

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