Gig review: The Hu At Leeds University Stylus

The Hu are a Mongolian folk metal group, who have taken the world by storm with their curious mixture of traditional hunnu rock. Conceived in 2016, the band have simply captured the interest of millions of people, with an eclectic mixture of classic metal music played on traditional Mongolian instruments and sung in their ancestral khoomei (throat singing) way.

There are just over three million people in Mongolia but this band have had over 80 million views on one single YouTube song post alone.

Such is the power of social media, that a band from a tiny area of an exceptionally remote country, can end up playing to over 1,000 people on a Tuesday night in Leeds.

Leeds Stylus is filled, packed out in fact with a mixture of heavy metal dudes, non heavy metal dudes and, well, quite an array of people who are mostly curious to see what The Hu have in store.

At 9pm, the band enter a darkened stage with the deep drones of a morin khuur or a doshpuluur echoing over their entrance. They’ve brought some serious kit in the form of traditional Mongolian instruments such as the above named morin khuur (a two-stringed upstanding violin), tovshuur (traditional Mongolian guitar), a tumur khuur (jaw harp) and possibly a tsuur (a large flute).

The ambience is haunting, it’s reticent, oddly cool and mystifyingly mesmeric, but a burst of drums and the band whip up a fury with the start of their set.

Their first few tracks Shihi Hutu, Shoog Shoog and The Gereg are just what the crowd need to show gaze their way into an epic set.

By the time The Great Ghinggis Khaan is thundered across the hall, The Hu have well and truly won everyone over, even the mildly curious security staff are seen tapping and nodding in time to the bellowing drums.

The majority of their tracks come from recent album, Rumble of Thunder, their second album to date. Their first, The Gereg, achieved number 21 in the UK charts, one of their highest charting positions to date.

Their set list soon flies through to their most famous and vastly viewed track, Wolf Totem. With chants of Hu, Hu, Hu, the band are certainly claiming their status. Black Thunder and This is Mongol end their rapturous and enchanting set.

With a crowd-pleasing encore of Metallica cover Sad But True, the The Hu have installed Mongolian folk metal on many Spotify download lists across all corners of Yorkshire and brought and end to a pretty amazing gig.

There are not many occasions recently where I’ve seen this level of excitement for a band of its calibre, let alone to sell out a venue of Stylus’ size, but The Hu have captured a new level of fan base and laid the foundation for a great career ahead.