Review Summary: An excellent sludge metal album with heavy riffs, powerful vocals, and crushing brutality throughout.
With a name like
Horn of a Rhino, you’d expect some ferocious music and the band doesn’t fail to impress in any way. Originally just called Rhino the band changed their name in 2010 to go along with their new brute of an album entitled
Weight of Coronation.Proving their name is no misnomer, the sludge metal band seem to manage to gore into your very soul with their intense music.
While Horn of the Rhino’s musicianship may not be nothing new, they manage to pull everything off together in spades. From their thick sludgy riffs, bellowing drums, to the angelic vocals as they triumph over the instruments that scream of crushing brutality, the band invests the listener. The guitarists do a splendid job of making violent, unrelenting riffs that are difficult to get bored of, even in ten plus minute songs. It’s not just a few riffs per song mind you; throughout the album the guitarists alternate between crushing brutality to beautiful melody that seems to dance off the very strings of the guitar. They always seem to change it up just before things get boring.
The band’s true asset, however, is their amazing vocalist. His powerful voice goes well with the crushing music the rest of the band produces. It is almost as if he is screaming out to the heavens in anger at some points of the album. At other points he can sound like he’s delivering a eulogy of a relative or friend, but he still has the emotion behind his words. He really does make the band pop out more as a whole.
In short,
Horn of the Rhino has created an excellent album with everything you could want in a sludge metal album. Heavy riffs that ooze sludge, powerful doom gospel vocals, and crushing brutality throughout.
Listen to:
Speak in Tongues
Sovereign
Crushed and Dragged to the Swamp
