This is the second album from UK stoner/sludge metallers Barbarian Hermit.
It’s been six long years since 2018’s Solitude and Savagery, but now Barbarian Hermit have returned, and with a different vocalist. Mean Sugar contains 44 minutes of new music for us to hungrily devour.
A hearty mix of stoner, doom, sludge, and heavy metal, Mean Sugar is all about big riffs, rich melody, crushing groove, and infectious hooks. The songs are well-written and bristling with confident swagger. Rather than surface-level bravado though, there’s a depth of delivery here that’s effective in its realisation. Barbarian Hermit manage to dig beneath the veneer of burly riffs and rolling rhythms to bring a layer of emotion to the music that helps to increase its impact.
Mean Sugar is more diverse and ambitious than you might expect, given the inherent restrictions of the source genre. Barbarian Hermit may build the foundations of their music with tried and tested stoner/doom materials, but they don’t fully restrict themselves to this; influences from alternative, progressive, classic, and post-metal, can be heard on occasion. Although not the core of the band’s sound by any means, Barbarian Hermit make these their own and use them to ornament and enrich the colossal sludge structures of the songs. The end result is a collection of songs that hold your attention across the album’s duration, and has very little filler within this, (there’s a pointless interlude track though, because of course there is).
The band’s new singer, (actually returning original singer), puts in a good performance throughout. The songs work with his voice, and vice versa, to become greater than the sum of their parts. Whether a fearsome roar or a smooth clean vocal, his voice is perfect for the music.
Mean Sugar is one of the stronger examples of the stoner/doom/sludge style that you’ll find out there in the wild. It’s riotously good fun, but has enough heart to keep you returning to it. Barbarian Hermit 2.0 is an upgrade, and Mean Sugar should be on the shopping list of anyone that likes good honest old-fashioned song-focused heavy music.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 