Band : Conan
Album title : Horseback Battle Hammer
Label : Aurora Borealis
Distributor : /
Release date : 2010
Review : CD

This is one of those albums that pretty much caught my attention on the merits of the album cover alone. That grim look is creepy, very creepy. Behold Conan : a pulverizing sludge leviathan utterly aflame with gargantuan fuzz, distortion, wah-wah, feedback, you name it. Every pounding drum beat riff is painstakingly gruesome and suffocating, the music’s lumbering snail pace is ultimately lethal.

Luckily, they don’t go slow all the time. Some listeners dig on the painfully slow groove and can ride it for an hour. Others, like me, need dynamics. Conan’s got few, in the form of brief bursts before the leviathan surfaces again. Powerful riffs are dusted with an endless amount of feedback, ceaselessly scorching out the thick-necked mammoth grooves with monumental aggression The songs “Satsumo”, “Dying giant”, “Sea lord” and the title track manage to be droner-inducing (Sunno), sludge (Melvins) repetitive (Grief) and prozac doom (Electric Wizard/ Yob) all at once.

Ultraheavy shit and depending on your mental state you will find this wicked cool or dead boring. But I am sure Horseback Battle Hammer will no doubt be on many a die-hard sludge doom fan’s best of list for 2010.

87/100

Cosmicmasseur.