Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Drone Hunter
Label: Self-released
Released: 2013
Length: 43:35
Rating: 4/5
Croatian musical progressiveness, a first-rate sound tempered in fire, and a whole swarm of gems that have been lining up and feasting nicely south of the Kolpa border in recent years keep pulling me in more and more. After my January first contact with the Međimurje outfit Drone Hunter, I’m all the more convinced that beyond the border posts in people’s heads and on politicians’ papers there are plenty of young, open-minded, music-inspired lads with real musical potency. This time I’m holding an unusual debut in my hands, one that differs from the sea of rehashed, already-heard records in a few key ways, which I have to spell out before I dive into the lovely shades of this first outing. First off, Drone Hunter are a band whose remarkable shared chemistry has only been forged since spring 2012, and I’d also point out that in their strictly instrumental outpourings you can feel three separate styles and influences. Besides old-school, HC-soaked punk, there’s plenty of AC/DC-school boogie rock, and Black Sabbath and Lemmy left their mark too, as did Hank Williams and a palette of country and bluegrass acts that young folks listen to less, all of it in a shared cauldron of synthesis giving birth to something exceptional and very listenable. If we had to slap labels on Drone Hunter and sort the music into boxes (I’m still convinced that’s the root reason music gets robbed of its diverse excellence and turns damn boring), they’d maybe land in the stoner drawer, maybe groove metal, but rather than the alphabetical drawers of cliché pointlessness, I’d file the band under good music.
Recorded over two summer months in 2013, the debut was forged by the Varaždin lads with the help of the sound duo Vlatko Blažek and Marin Kereša, and from the very first listen it’s clear that all the passion is captured in its musical essence: the living, unfeigned beauty of a triune music god, roaring and blowing out of the young band’s ten tracks from the first chord on. In the sludgy layers of grime, the primal riffs and the trio’s gushes of tight-knit ideas, you see that measure of artistic maturity and unusual cohesive energy of interpersonal magnetism (the latter happens, like love, only once or, at best, twice in a lifetime) that some bands may once have had, but then, chasing better sales, bigger print runs and ever more extreme pandering to plebeian taste, they sold it off so easily, lost it forever, and were never able to get used to it again or learn it back. The musical sonic jigsaw is perfect and penetrating!
The opener Aguamala offers itself as the first moment of the ride down a sonic slide of sweet, sinful directness. The filthy opening guitar riff becomes the main point of orientation. The smell of swamp, a whiff of dusty wind and smoke from a southern rock campfire conjure up images of Clutch, C.O.C., and also Metallica and Audioslave. The chemistry between Fitz, Klen and Rus is top-notch. Rus’s drums, against the dominant textures of the just-right distorted, low-tuned guitar and Klen’s simple but massive and audible bass, play with your senses and force you to move, to get dynamic. The band has a feel for the primal play of rhythm and catchy melody, while suspense and the dynamics of loud and quiet have given way here to a batch of good ideas and sonic textures that just keep lining up and lining up in a seemingly simple fashion. Blood Island is a proper sludge thrash gem, and the three horsemen of the sonic apocalypse let off steam this time in the way Lars, Kirk, James and company knew before they got spoiled on the Black Album: a primal sound of just-right uncompromising garage, but with style, a string of sweat beads, wild tempo and the unfiltered blood of an extraordinary musical cross-breeding. The sludge doesn’t stall this time, yet Drone Hunter still don’t sound like a flat copy of Karma To Burn. The Crow’s Final Scream borrows its tuneful elements from early Down, only Anselmo’s vocals are nowhere to be heard, except maybe somewhere between the left and right ear in the brain, in the listener’s mind, which easily starts murmuring the fitting verses, vocal lines, and putting words to the track’s seemingly mute message. The play of images builds both from track to track and within the compositions themselves. After a varied finale of layered rhythm play and distorted fractals of organicness, the trio launches into the hunt for those still unconvinced with the track The Hunt. The pattern is similar but not identical, and Drone Hunter fire off nothing but heavy, big-caliber sonic missiles. Far more relief comes with the excellent Twisted Horse Boogie, which easily stands as one of the more striking peaks of the young trio’s creative output. The melodic boogie play of piercing guitar, bass and massive drums toys with imagination, and it’s plain to see that this time the thick oil of AC/DC, a little R.A.T.M. and Metallica from the Garage Inc. era get poured into the primal Corrosion Of Conformity machine, but the first Garage Inc., not the second, trendy one.
The Ram has a bit more to it. After the primal brutality, Drone Hunter allow themselves a little rhythmic fooling around, direct fooling around and jamming, and somewhere deep down, for a moment or two, I even hear Deftones, but without the puffed-up elusiveness. Drone Hunter are more direct and beefier, more like real dudes! The bluesier, more translucent Blacksmith’s Revenge On Machines sounds more Sabbath-esque and doomed than weepy and melancholic. Drone Hunter grab the sledgehammers and pound all the skeptics into the ground up to ear level, though it’s true that a riff or two shows up again here, but on purpose, to keep the direction of travel and a full masculine bloom going into the next moments of fusion. Backfire sounds grungier and filthier, but only in the manner of the magnificent Alice In Chains. Once more, beneath the sonic avalanches of glorious eruptive ideas, I hear the bitter voice of the late Staley, and Drone Hunter allow themselves excursions into more inspired jam waters of pure southern stoner, then glide on across the tectonic fault lines of a world tailored purely to the band’s measure, needs and taste. The whole thing is punchy and hellishly catchy. Packin’Heat is another moment of total melodic and rhythmic domination, and the punchy, breakthrough string of compact riffs and juicy heartiness strikes the right chords if you have even the slightest love for a good musical party, a healthy dose of zing and mischievous guys’ fun over beer and distortion. Not even the closing Carving The Current spoils that, wrapping the whole thing up with a roar in a final act of will and pleasure with everything heard before, only this time the band gives itself room for a bit more noodling from its beating-heart helmsman, while staying safely in the shelter of the familiar chemistry of perfect fit.
In their first play of the senses, Drone Hunter touched the center of at least my world, and my shaken and kneaded auditory-canal erogenous zones let me know that this is a band with potency and potential, one worth praising point-blank and without sugarcoating in tons of metaphors. Drone Hunter are a band with balls, though maybe at moments they’re missing some vocals that would make the whole thing even prettier and better to consume. That might be an idea for next time, but I definitely hope the band’s road ahead doesn’t lead toward surrendering to molds. Not even their own aesthetic ones, I hope, and that they’ll keep allowing themselves free flight without limits. Maybe even a smidge more than this time, but you know how it goes: practice makes the master and the master makes practice. Drone Hunter are undoubtedly a gem that my pair of ears and hands will gladly reach for many more times, writing, at least in my head, a saga of verses and cries of pleasure, the very reason we listen to sludge music at all and believe in it completely, and not in the trendy crap.
Lineup
Filip Hajdarović –Fitz- guitar
Luka Klen- bass
Marko Gotal – Rus- drums
Production
Drone Hunter
Tracklist
1. Aguamala
2. Blood island
3. The Crow’s Final Scream
4. The Hunt
5. Twisted Horse Boogie
6. The Ram
7. Blacksmith’s Revenge On Machines
8. Backfire
9. Packin’ Heat
10. Carving The Current
