Detailed Reviews [La Horde – 2012 – “En Passant par le Monde”]

Prolusion. LA HORDE is a band hailing from France. I can’t tell you whether “En Passant par le Monde” is their debut release or not, because its press kit is entirely in French, which I don’t understand.

Analysis. While ranging in length from one and a half to four and a half minutes, the twelve tracks on this 43-minute disc have a lot more similarities than distinctions between themselves, all being songs with French lyrics, all sounding very heavy, at least for the most part. On the tracks La Horde du Contrevent and Deux pour un Seul Corps the quartet works with Hard Rock, traditional Heavy Metal and an extreme one, bordering on Death Metal, but fails to properly bring the styles together, merely alternating sections with corresponding arrangements. Besides, the pieces are vocal-heavy and fairly repetitive alike, all of which is typical of the rest of the material as well. Only on these do I hear the singer growl in places, while otherwise his vocals are normally sort of hooligan-style, reminding me overall of a cross between Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Brian Johnson of AC/DC and Lemmy of Motorhead, just delivered with a punkish aggression. Nuclear Mind and Spin both find the band working mainly with two styles, NWBHM and Doom Metal (of the Judas Priest and Black Sabbath variety respectively), without any attempts to mix those either. Well, closer to the end of the latter track the axeman takes a romp through the blues-rock idiom, which is extremely brief, though, only lasting for a few seconds. A seriously high shred factor is in full force on tracks like Les Derniers Hommes, Les Damnes, J’ai Vu and Extinction de Masse, all of which are overall NWBHM in style, albeit the latter two each additionally reveal a funk-evoking move at one point, with a slap bass and a bluesy guitar at its fore. The remaining four tracks, Condamne a Vivre, Monochrome, Eden and Echec, all alternate conventional hard rock arrangements with NWBHM-style ones and occasional forays into the blues rock realm. One may say all of the songs on the album have an extreme metal feel to them, at least in places, but it’s much more due to the aggressive vocal delivery than the instrumental performance, so I have omitted the term when describing most of those – along with potential points of comparison (Death, Atheist and so on).

Conclusion. La Horde is a group of fairly masterful musicians (hence the rating). However, what they present on this album is an odd cocktail of several Metal-related styles, prog-tinged at best, sounding dated throughout.

VM=Vitaly Menshikov: July 21, 2013
The Rating Room