ALBUM REVIEW: Mean Sugar – Barbarian Hermit
The last few years have played havoc with some of our most beloved bands, whether the rise of the alt-right has seen your favourite singer espousing mad conspiracy theories, lockdowns meant bands splitting up and venues closing down, or the joys of Brexit becoming apparent and putting a stop to (amongst other things) some juicy tours reaching the UK. However, there has been the odd silver lining to all of this and the return of BARBARIAN HERMIT is very much one of them.
Following the success of their 2018 debut full-length Solitude And Savagery and a number of excellent live shows around the country – including an appearance at 2019’s Bloodstock Festival – the band were starting to make a name for themselves. Then, along came lockdown and any momentum the band had built up to that point seemed to slowly dissipate, as it did for so many others. During that time, though, when things perhaps seemed lost, original vocalist Si Scarlett returned to the band and kickstarted a whole new period of creativity which, luckily for us, has resulted in new album Mean Sugar. And what an album it is.
Solitude And Savagery finished with the epic Laniakea, a groovy slab of psychedelic doom that was very much the highlight of the album. Mean Sugar starts off in exactly the same vein, the title track riffing its way out of the darkness like some unfathomable beast lurching its way towards you from over the horizon. It’s slow, but it swings and grooves and opens the album exactly as fans of the band would hope. Scarlett’s return hasn’t seen the band veering off on a different course, just expanding the furrows of the one they’d already started cutting.
Second track Battle Of Kompromat opens with a more classic metal vibe, the chugging riffs of Adam Robertshaw and Mike Regan pummelling your ear drums with their sheer weight. The song explores a lighter, more melodic tone in its middle eight, letting some sunshine into the darkness, before the band reconvene for a wonderfully heavy doom metal coda that’ll have you banging your head while grinning from ear to ear.
That song segues into another groovy slab of doom in the brilliantly-titled Who Put 50p In You, which, in its verses, is reminiscent of CATHEDRAL in their mid-90s pomp. Once again, though, the band inject a melodic sensibility into things so their music doesn’t just become the same thing repeated ad infinitum – an accusation it’s easy to level at some of BARBARIAN HERMIT’s peers. This attitude of experimenting and innovating runs through the whole record, whether in the more melodic, psychedelic parts of songs or, as we see here, a garage rock section with handclaps and spacey backing vocals.
Like their fellow Northern doom-friends BOSS KELOID, BARBARIAN HERMIT are not a band to always focus on the negative and throughout this record there ripples a positive energy that’s sadly somewhat lacking in a lot of heavy music. Stitched Up, the album’s first single, is a great example of this. The verses bounce along beautifully, sounding like a radio-friendly summer anthem, before the huge riffs of the chorus and the concrete-heavy closing passages bring back the metal. It’s an intoxicating blend, at once feeling familiar and also completely different. It also gives the album a real epic quality, despite most of the songs only clocking in around the five-minute mark. Although it’s a cliché to say it, it’s a real journey of an album that you’ll want to listen to – several times – from start to finish just to see what’s happening next.
As well as Scarlett’s enigmatic performance and the excellent guitar work of Robertshaw and Regan, a mention should also go to the rhythm section of Gaz Manning (drums) and Rob Sutcliffe (bass) who play out of their skins on this album. A doom metal band is only ever as good as the engine that drives it and, if Mean Sugar is anything to go by, BARBARIAN HERMIT have kitted themselves out with something special. Album closer Heal The Tyrant encapsulates the sheer joy of everything that has come before. Equal parts epic metal tune, funky psychedelic jam and choral singalong, it perfectly sums up where BARBARIAN HERMIT find themselves in 2024: brimming with creative energy, writing killer songs and having a whole load of fun while they’re doing it.
Produced by PIJN’s Joe Clayton and mastered by Chris Fielding, Mean Sugar sounds suitably massive and sees the band hitting an exciting new peak which should propel them up into the higher echelons of the UK’s doom and stoner scenes where they belong. It’s a wonderful album, which nods a head to the genre classics while still pushing the envelope in a uniquely British (and Northern) direction.
Rating: 9/10
Mean Sugar is set for release on August 2nd via APF Records.
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