Last year I spent quite a lot of time educating my wife about the history of heavy metal. When we reached the twenty first century, I cited The Hu’s use of throat singing and traditional Mongolian instrumentation as a perfect demonstration of just how versatile and varied metal has become. So when the opportunity to see them play at Birmingham’s O2 academy on the back of their best album yet, Hun, I couldn’t say no.

But before we get to the main event, we have to talk about support act Skald. Based on the name, I was expecting some twee folk metal nonsense. But from the moment they walked onto stage, backlit with blue light, I knew we were in for something very different. They launched immediately into a hypnotic set of pounding neo-folk. They are a perfect pick to open for The Hu – relatable to metal but using different instrumentation and song writing ideas to capture that spirit. Their commitment to singing mostly in Old Norse, with occasional use of Modern Icelandic, Faroese and other Nordic languages, is to be commended.

Skald’s music is primarily propelled by layers of polyrhythmic percussion topped with almost choral vocals and stringed instruments. It was very easy to fall under their spell on slower numbers, with the energy picking up nicely when they kicked things into gear. The mix did struggle to have the strings penetrate through the din of the drums, with Marie Potosniak’s vocals also getting drowned out at times. That said, I suspect that mixing a band like this doesn’t come up too often so I can’t criticise the sound team too harshly. Overall, this was an atmospheric and unique set that prepared us nicely for our headliners.

The Hu were met with a heroes’ welcoming when they strode onto stage, with chants of their name occurring between songs throughout most of the set. The four core members of the band took pride of place at the front of the stage, but they have an expanded touring line up featuring a guitarist, bassist, drummer and percussionist that really filled out their sound to cacophonous excellence, The set was brilliant from the get go, but the moment I realised we were watching something special was when the stomping section of second song The Horsemen hit and the band locked into that four four groove harder than any Metallica show I’ve seen.

The set, as one might expect, lent heavily on material from Hun, with a few highlights from the previous album sprinkled in for good measure. No single member of the band performed with anything less that maximum energy, headbanging and shredding on their instruments with all the confidence of true rock stars. Unlike for Skald, the mix for our headliner was perfect with everything clearly audible when it needed to be – with the exception of one jaw-harp section but I’ll let that slide.

Throughout the set the band would hit their throat singing drone notes together, each of them at a slightly different pitch creating a mesmerising harmony. This does take place on the records, but seeing it in the live environment just carried so much more power and impact that I gasped every time. The Hu are a perfect demonstration of the transcendent power of music in moments like these and in their performance of Echoes of My Father. If you’ve read my review of the Wendy’s EP, you might be aware of why this song hit me so hard, but it really says something that this one slower song in the set could affect me so much despite not understanding a single word of the lyrics.

Now, I’ve mentioned that most of the set was focussed on material from Hun with a sprinkling of tracks from Rumble of Thunder throughout, so some fans of the debut album, The Gereg, might worry that it’s been forgotten. I have good news though, to close the night, The Hu launched into an insanely good ending run. Going Yuve Yuve Yu into Wolf Totem is already good enough to be borderline criminal, especially with the enjoyment of hearing thousands of metalheads trying to sing along to these anthems as best they could. But then following that up with a proud, storming rendition of This Is Mongol was just the cherry on top.

After that, I would have been satisfied. Watching the band walk off stage, I didn’t feel like anything had been missed. But the crowd continued chanting for more. This led the band to re-emerge and ask a question with the most obvious answer in the world. “Do you like Iron Maiden?” Yes, it turns out, Birmingham fucking loves Iron Maiden. It hadn’t entered my mind until that moment, that The Hu might perform their cover of The Trooper that evening – they already have enough bangers that it’s not necessary. But god-damn, I’m happy they did. It was the perfect end to an excellent night.

You can find more photos from the night in the gallery below.

The Hu | O2 Academy Birmingham | 08/10/2026