Band:	Horn Of The Rhino
Album:	Weight Of Coronation
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	2010

01. Speaking In Tongues
02. Mass Burial Punishment
03. Sovereign
04. Throats In Blood
05. Weight Of Coronation
06. Southern Beast
07. Brimstone Breath
08. Crushed And Dragged To The Swamp

I was honestly never all that into stoner metal. Of course, the classic bands like Sleep, Kyuss, Electric Wizard and the like are always fun, but for the most part upon getting more into the genre I found it to be flooded with too many drony, monotonous bands for my liking. So the question I then asked myself was: "How do bands with such simplistic, transparent song structures manage to keep their audience hooked?" Well, about a month ago, I found my answer with Horn Of The Rhino after a friend recommended Weight Of Coronation to me. I was hesitant at first, knowing what genre it was, but I finally decided to give it a go. The first listen didn't impress me, so I gave it another go, which didn't do anything either. But on my third listen, everything clicked, and it all fell into place. This little Spanish trio have certainly made a (small) name for themselves in recent years, and piqued my interest in doing so, by managing to make the most out of their uncomplicated songwriting. And I don't mean that in any bad way whatsoever.

Horn Of The Rhino are a "less is more" type of band, plain and simple. You aren't going to find anything overtly technical or grandiose on Weight Of Coronation, much less the other albums in their discography. Upon first listen, this may come across (as it did to me) as suggesting that the band simply don't know how to put things together for more intense composition, but this a bit of a deception. The album is simple, the riffs are simple, the song structures are simple and repetitive at many points, and yet it somehow all manages to come together to create quite an impressive sound. There are plenty of memorable, groovy, heavy riffs that will easily get stuck in your head after a few listens (check out around 6:32 in "Speaking In Tongues" and around 5:40 in "Mass Burial Punishment"... the latter riff hits you like a freight train).

Accentuating the band's groovy sludgeiness, of course, is Javier Galvez, who really must be applauded for his amazing voice, which I can best describe as something of a bizarre combination of Ozzy Osbourne, Layne Staley, and Chris Cornell. There is a very grunge-esque style to Javier's vocals, and yet they maintain something of a sense of their own uniqueness at the same time. His vocal range is quite pleasingly diverse as well, as can be seen in his aggressive, almost snarling style in "Southern Beast," his high-pitched wails in "Sovereign," and the somewhat middle ground his voice finds between the two throughout the majority of the rest of the album.

Furthermore, the lesson of the day with Horn Of The Rhino is that it doesn't take musical virtuosity to craft a good album. On Weight Of Coronation, these guys strike a very commendable balance between the vocals and the music of the album. It seems as though at every point, the music is making up for what (little) the vocals lack, and vice versa. At many points throughout the album as well, there are extended periods of no-vocal groovy jamming, which will certainly be delightful for those who prefer more instrumental, jam band type music. The only complaint I really have with Horn Of The Rhino is that their songs don't have any guitar leads, and I think that a southern-rock type solo here and there could have actually mixed quite well with the rest of the album. But as I said, Horn Of The Rhino seem to have quite a "less is more" mentality to their musical approach. And, quite frankly, it's working for them just fine.