Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Nat Greener enjoys a captivating night of cinematic production and unique instrumentation
Image: The Hu by Jamie Huntley
Epic is a word that gets thrown around too easily, but The Hu earned it in Newcastle. A production this cinematic deserved a crowd to match, and between tracks O2 City Hall answered with one voice: HU HU HU HU HU. A heaving room felt part of something more than a Saturday night out, set against one of the most instrumentally immense productions I’ve seen. The did more to bind the room together than any between-song banter could have.
SKÁLD set the mood. The French Nordic folk collective formed in 2018 around producer Christophe Voisin-Boisvinet – their name inspired from the Old Norse word for poet. They sing largely in traditional and Nordic languages, drawing on ancient instruments such as the nyckelharpa, lyre and talharpa alongside shamanic percussion. As an opening act they suited the evening perfectly, arriving from a different corner of the old world with the same instinct for myth and ritual.
The Hu then took the stage. They formed in Ulaanbaatar in 2016, when producer Dashka hand-picked four students from the Mongolian State Music and Dance Conservatory. Their name is the Mongolian root word for human being, and their self-coined genre, hunnu rock, welds the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle), tovshuur (Mongolian guitar), tumur khuur (jaw harp) and throat singing to heavy rock drums and distortion. It is a refreshing take on alternative sounds, and hearing it at full volume is another thing entirely.
The set opened with Lost Soul, from their third album Hun, released in July, and ran through new material including Horsemen alongside tracks from 2022’s Rumble of Thunder. Black Thunder and the closing This Is Mongol came from that record. Both bands sang in languages far removed from the English that dominates alternative music, The Hu in Mongolian and SKÁLD in Old Norse, and the crowd never needed a translation.
My personal highlights were the older tracks. Yuve Yuve Yu and Wolf Totem landed back to back, and both came from their 2019 debut The Gereg. The two videos went viral in late 2018, and in April 2019 Wolf Totem topped the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales chart, making The Hu the first Mongolian act to top a Billboard chart. Yuve Yuve Yu, which translates roughly as ‘what’s going on?’, is a nod to Chinggis Khan. Hearing the two songs that started everything, in a room full of people was a true joy that only live music can bring!
The encore was an epic Mongolian take on Iron Maiden’s The Trooper, the cover they released in 2024 ahead of supporting the iconic metal outfit in North America. After a night this cinematic, it was a fitting final flourish for a room full of rockers.
The captivating performance, unique instrumentation and a giant inflatable Mongolian warrior made this a night to remember in the Toon.
