vote
7.5
- Bands:
HUNTSMEN - Duration: 00:42:18
- Available from: 06/07/2024
- Label:
-
Prosthetic Records
Streaming not yet available
In 2020 we met the Huntsmen, a Chicago group that aimed to combine the tradition of American folk songwriting with the most bleak and desolate doom. An intent that had materialized in the pachydermal “Mandala Of Fear”, a work of almost eighty minutes which, just like a long journey through the boundless American landscapes, had made us forget the hardships of the crossing, showing us the potential of this anomalous musical encounter .
Four years later, the Huntsmen say they have gone through a very difficult period, made up of artistic satisfactions combined with personal problems that have put the band’s stability to the test. Yet, as often happens, difficulties are precisely the cement capable of bonding relationships even more and the quintet returns today with a second album, “The Dry Land”, which takes everything good we found in the debut, freeing it from those concretions that are inevitably present in such a long and tiring disk, and transforms it into an even more precious and ductile mineral.
Only six songs this time, for a duration that is just over half of the previous album, yet the strength of the Huntsmen remains unchanged.
“This, Our Gospel”, with its eight minutes of duration, is the perfect calling card of their proposal: powerful, implacable, yet melancholic and capable of expressing a layered and detailed spectrum of emotions, also thanks to the excellent use of the voices, male and female. “In Time, All Things” also incorporates black metal elements, which were almost absent in their debut, adding a further nuance to their proposal. Finally, there is no shortage of more delicate and acoustic passages, those that more openly pay homage to intimate and reflective works of the American tradition – think for example of a record like Springsteen’s “Nebraska”, or early Bob Dylan – such as “Lean Times”, where the electrical component is recovered only at the end.
If “Mandala Of Fear” had already convinced us, despite being aware of the commitment necessary to face a journey of this magnitude, “The Dry Land” manages to surpass its predecessor with a more accessible, but not superficial proposal. . A path of artistic growth that we expect will bring even more consensus towards a group that is rapidly building a recognizable and mature personality.
