Review: Barbarian Hermit ‘Mean Sugar’

I live about an hour south of Manchester, and I like to think that I keep my ear to the ground for great sounding bands and new emerging talent. Over the past few years, I’ve heard plenty of rumblings and good things about Barbarian Hermit, and with their new album due out, I was excited to see what they have come up with.

Written over a three year period, Mean Sugar is a cathartic creation, set against a backdrop that has seen people endure a global pandemic, endless political turmoil, a cost of living crisis and war. For the band, they coped best by focusing their energy on playing some very heavy and loud music and have produced an album of real quality.

As the rumblings begin on the title track Mean Sugar, you can instantly recognise the return of original vocalist Simon Scarlett and the music picks up from the 2016 debut with doom and stoner vibes splattered across the opening track, before the bass from Rob Sutcliffe kicks in and the music is propelled to a higher plain. This sound continues with Battle Of Kompromat, heavy and sludgy, a noise encapsulating the post-industrial beauty of the city they grew up in.

Then comes a little pet hate of mine, a one-minute interlude/intro called Out Come The Boasts, which could have been added directly onto the aptly titled Who Put 50p In You, so I kind of feel that I’ve been put firmly back in my place with that one. This song is my favourite on the album, as the riff is stingy, mean and hard-hitting. I couldn’t stop shaking my head in admiration when I first heard it, and still can’t several listens later. The angry vocal is the perfect accompaniment to the superb guitar sounds bursting out from Mike Regan and Adam Robertshaw.

The angry vocal is the perfect accompaniment to the superb guitar sounds bursting out…

They certainly have a talent for writing catchy riffs and the opening of Stitched Up is another fine example of this, with the rhythm carrying on throughout the song. Gareth Manning on drums keeps it nice and simple, driving each song forward with his precision and I like the change of tempo midway through with a more psychedelic groove coming out.

The melodies are still coming aplenty on Deadbolt and Kick Up The Dust, you can sense the anger and rage of the bitter sweetness of growing up in a northern town more in the vocal delivery and the latter of the two tracks show a more diverse side to the band’s talents.

They wrap up this excellent album with Stranger Than Fiction and Heal The Tyrant which again draws on the varied musical tastes of the band and has produced songs that are both earnest and sincere, whilst being challenging and uneasy. It’s hard to compare these to anything else, as the range is vast, but this will hopefully put them front and centre when people want something different to listen to.

Label: APF Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Twitter | Instagram

Scribed by: Matthew Williams