NEWS 2020/03/25
It’s a rarity for a band to balance muscularity and progression with as much class as Hyborian. This second full-length finds the Kansas City sluggers wearing their evident technical mastery lightly, while packing enough berserker passion to conjure images of frontman Martin Bush bellowing his vocals shirtless on a craggy mountaintop. It’s only enhanced by lyrics like Driven By Hunger’s ‘Today for the hunt / Tomorrow the feast!’, suitably brawny sentiments for a band whose name derives from Robert E. Howard’s Conan mythology. There’s a definite hint of Mastodon about Hyborian’s skilled tangle of guitar and vocal arrangements, set alongside a thrusting, mid-tempo reinterpretation of thrash, and there would be few complaints if the next Metallica album featured songs as convincing as St...