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Sons of Huns, While Sleeping Stay Awake: Why Would You Sleep Anyway?

Posted in Reviews on August 5th, 2015 by JJ Koczan

sons of huns while sleeping stay awake

Chances are that if someone came up to you and said, “Hey, I just checked out a hotly-tipped heavy rock trio from Portland, Oregon, that you need to hear,” you’d be right in thinking that it’s a story you already know, and in the case of the three-piece Sons of Huns, to a certain extent there’s a superficial familiarity from the get-go. At least with the narrative. Band comes from hip town, makes cool records, gets noticed. That doesn’t do much to convey the appeal of Sons of Huns on their second record for RidingEasy, the vinyl-begging nine-track/37-minute While Sleeping Stay Awake, but if you’re already that jaded going into it, then fine.

For everyone else ready to get aboard the band’s party wagon of fuzzed up semi-thrash riffing, the Toshi Kasai-produced While Sleeping Stay Awake follows Sons of Huns‘ 2013 debut, Banishment Ritual, which earned a wide barrage of acclaim from listeners and critics alike. The new album doesn’t reinvent the methodology of riff-led shenanigans metal, but it does refine it, and even more impressively, it refines it while at the same time managing to not sound like Red Fang, who one could argue are the Pacific Northwest’s regional forerunners of the style. A song like “Eye in the Sky” is probably as close as they come, and even that still has plenty of distance to spare, Sons of Huns impressing in the meantime with their fast-paced winding rhythms and flourishes of arrangement, guitarist/vocalist Pete Hughes (also of Danava) and bassist/vocalist Aaron Powell running circles around the central forward movement from drummer Ryan Northrop (also of Holy Grove) that propels the track on its somehow-still-efficient route.

Hughes is quick to toss in a lead at the end of a measure or to mark out a transition between a verse and chorus, and that adds excitement to an already energetic performance, but in the end it’s the songwriting that rules the day over any individual performance — up to and including the guest spots from Scott “Wino” Weinrich, who adds vocals on third cut “An Evil Unseen” and the MelvinsDale Crover, who sits in for “Philosopher’s Stone.” Opener “Osiris Slain” sets a lyrical tone toward the otherworldly, but Sons of Huns never veer far enough from their straightforward path to be called cult rock, even if they touch on a thematic inclination there and on side B’s two-parter, “Alchemist Part I” and “Alchemist Part II.”

sons of huns

Something else the leadoff piece does is establish a post-Motörhead type of momentum, Hughes and Powell both contributing vocals atop a speedy progression that finishes strong with some more subdued chugging only to pick up the pace again with the tense start of “Ad Astra,” the central riff of which could claim Dio‘s “Stand up and Shout” as a likely source for at least part of its genetic makeup. Sons of Huns make this their own as they do early-Fu Manchu fuzz a little later on “Philosopher’s Stone,” but with “An Evil Unseen,” they quickly establish Wino as a recognizable presence alongside Hughes‘ vocals, rhythmic rolls and shuffles playing off each other in a memorable chorus before a swath of leads hits in the second half. All this in a song under four minutes long, mind you. As noted, they work pretty efficiently throughout While Sleeping Stay Awake, but that doesn’t necessarily leave tracks without a sense of space either. “Eye in the Sky” is a rawer thrasher, but “Philosopher’s Stone” cuts the tempo somewhat to flesh out a sleek boogie that builds in intensity until fading out — Crover‘s drums seem to be the last to go — adding some variety to what by the end of side A has already been a precise attack.

And I suppose a big part of While Sleeping Stay Awake‘s success comes from the band’s ability to sound laid back while executing that precision, perhaps best shown on “Alchemist Part I” and “Alchemist Part II,” wherein they directly trade between a full-sprint rush subtly complex in its arrangement and the classic rock boogie and doomed riffing in the second part, which is the longest cut on the album at just over six minutes, Northrop‘s swing and Hughes‘ shouts and Alice Cooper-esque snarl making it a highlight of the collection as a whole. They answer it with the title-track and more fuzz boogie, but there’s little relinquishing the momentum they’ve worked so hard by then to build and maintain, the song seeming to hold its earliest-Metallica nod back until the last minute, seeking and subsequently destroying while keeping a grip on its groove to the last, closer “The Reaper” (or “The Reaper is Waiting,” or “The Reaper is Waiting for You,” depending on whom you ask) winding up While Sleeping Stay Awake with a tale of lost hope and impending destruction.

It’s a fitting enough end, particularly delivered at the clip it is and with the hook on top of which it seems to gallop, and while Sons of Huns boast a decided penchant toward lyrical severity, the underlying spirit of their sophomore outing doesn’t fall prey to pretense really of any sort, instrumental or vocal, and once again, it’s their ability to stand in a delicate balance that marks them out both within the populated scene from whence they emerge and the wider sphere of the heavy rock underground, on the West Coast and beyond. Somewhere between classic metal, ’70s boogie, modern heavy rock and thrash, Sons of Huns carve an identity for themselves that only becomes more their own over the speedy, quick-turning course through these songs.

Sons of Huns, While Sleeping Stay Awake (2015)

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Sons of Huns on Bandcamp

RidingEasy Records

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