There are gigs, and then there are evenings like this one. On Thursday I found myself inside the Mongolian Embassy in London, not a venue that turns up on many tour posters, watching The HU mark the countdown to their third album with a stripped-back acoustic set for a small room of guests and press.
It is a fitting place for this band to gather. The debut album that started it all, The Gereg, took its name from the diplomatic passport of the Mongol Empire, so an embassy is about as apt a home as The HU could ask for. Genghis Khan references sat around every corner, and the walls carried beautiful artwork of people gathered in yurts, horses at full gallop and herders working cattle across open land. To hear the band play a few feet away, inside an actual piece of Mongolia on UK soil, carried real weight.
The Ambassador of Mongolia opened the evening, thanking the band for promoting the richness of Mongolian culture and for bringing millions of people together across the world, and congratulating them on the release of their third album. Dan Waite, CEO of Better Noise Music, followed, and reminded the room that the label held The HU’s very first press event in this same building before their debut had even arrived. He spoke of a band that has never diluted itself to reach the world, but has instead brought the world to Mongolia. He also pointed to the honour that means the most: in 2022 The HU became the first rock or metal act ever named a UNESCO Artist for Peace, a title previously held by the likes of Herbie Hancock, Sarah Brightman and Dame Shirley Bassey.
Then came the music. Food and drink flowed beforehand and the band were happy to chat with everyone as we waited, which only made the performance feel more personal when it arrived. They opened with ‘This Is Mongol’, the song they normally save to close a show, reworked here in acoustic form. ‘Black Thunder’ followed, before the moment of the night: the first acoustic airing of ‘Grey Hun’, a song they had released only weeks earlier. Up close the instruments were fascinating. The horsehead fiddles were strung with real horsehair and crowned with scrolls carved into horses’ heads, and every piece carried intricate patterns and animal detailing. Hearing throat singing and this centuries-old craftsmanship a few feet away, with none of the huge scale that usually surrounds them, was something I will not forget in a hurry.
Speaking through their translator, the band told us why the embassy means so much. An embassy, they said, is a place in a foreign country where artists, creativity and citizens are supported, so promoting the third album here felt genuinely special. On the record itself, they explained that every traditional element remains, the overtone and throat singing and the instruments passed down through generations, while the new songs push to capture the speed and braveness of the nomadic people alongside a modern Mongolia.
‘Grey Hun’ drew the warmest explanation. It is a song about being authentic, brave and strong no matter what life throws at you. They described a figure familiar in Mongolia, almost a Robin Hood, confident and unbothered by small things, not irresponsible but self-assured and living life to the full. The music, they said, is there to encourage people to be confident, authentic and strong.
HUN arrives on 24 July via Better Noise Music, eleven tracks deep in the lore of Mongolia and built, in the band’s words, on years of hard work and grit. You may already know ‘Lost Soul’ featuring Jonny Hawkins of Nothing More, the two acts’ first collaboration, and ‘Grey Hun’, which sounds even more alive after hearing it stripped back in that room.
If the embassy evening was a quiet moment, what surrounds it is anything but. The HU have one of their busiest stretches yet ahead of them. As this piece goes live they are readying to take the stage at Knebworth Park alongside Iron Maiden for Eddfest, a bill that also features The Darkness, Airbourne and The Almighty. Then comes the album on 24 July. From there they head out on what they have called their biggest UK and European headline tour to date, a run through September and October with SKÁLD in support that takes in more than twenty cities across nine countries, including a London show at O2 Academy Brixton on 9 October and dates in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Berlin and Paris. They have described the new setlist as full of hope and energy, promising a brand new performance and, in their own words, a fiery attitude. The band have even hinted that ideas for a fourth album are already taking shape.
From the grasslands of Mongolia to Knebworth, from a Paris UNESCO stage to a quiet embassy room in London, The HU keep proving the same thing. They never leave home to meet the world. They bring the world home to Mongolia.
