What the hell happened with Grand Magus? From their awesome debut, to the heavy metal gem Iron Will, I always thought these guys had something special. The riffs rolling, heavy, thundering. Deep, rumbling, amazing vocals. Fucking great hooks, fucking great leads, everything was in place for a new classic band within the traditional heavy metal genre. However, where Iron Will will be considered a future classic, Hammer of the North took a serious dip in quality. It wasn’t bad, never bad, but it wasn’t close to what they had previously accomplished. So here we are with this, The Hunt, an album I was tempted to call out as a steaming pile of damp, wet shit upon my first listen.

I refuse to believe that a band can evolve in this direction and take a piss on their earlier, far superior efforts. From a crushingly heavy sound, they went to bleak, stripped down guitars and gutless riffs revolving around catchy choruses and anorectic melodies. The production is bland and never allows promising passages to break through to deliver the dirty slabs of meaty riffage we know and love. The vocals are way too high in the mix, and while I like, no wait, love JB, he completely drowns out both the bass and already thin guitars. The songs are forged to catch your attention and stick annoyingly in your head, not to drive you headlong into a brick wall like they used to. Earlier in their career, they managed to mix the two phenomenons, they´re now failing at the most important of them.

I know that this sounds more like an uprofessional rant than a review, but I’m just so damn disappointed that I can’t let it slip.

However, I’ll get my act together and give these guys credit for a couple of things. There’s a bundle of songs here that wakes the wolf. The beastly Son of the Last Breath is occasionally good if not great. Iron Hand also cuts the 80’s hard rock bullshit, and while the weak sound sucks a lot of life out of it, the familiar patterns are there. Some of the songs sports som good hooks that will have you think of Iron Will or Wolf’s Return but sadly not much more.

Don’t go ahead and expect anything outstanding here. If you like your hard rock then this might be something for you. But for those of you who demand and thirst for punishing, bloody heavy metal should skip it. Don’t even bother.