Sergeant Thunderhoof – The Ghost Of Badon Hill
Pale Wizard – 2024
Rock, Stoner, Metal, Prog
Rated: *****
One can trace the growth of Sergeant Thunderhoof through all the records they’ve put out since 2014. Every album again, they’ve managed to grow as a band and as individual players. And as you run your fingers through all those records, and you let your ears feast upon their songs, you will hear those smokey whisps. The guitar smears, the echoes of those songs that lead up to the majestic This Sceptered Veil album from 2022. Songs like Goat Mushroom, Afterburner and When Time Stood Still churning out those shimmering glints of the diamond that would become This Sceptered Veil. Which became one of my absolute favorite albums of 2022. And where the growth was gradual before that album, This Sceptered Veil became a gigantic leap. A highly emotional and beautiful work of art. And now, the Bath (recently turned) quintet, are back with their new one called The Ghost Of Badon Hill. And even if it might lack a tiny bit of the emotional charge that riddled This Sceptered Veil, it consolidates on everything good and beautiful that record was. The ghostly memories of early songs less pronounced, the compositions opulent, yet more concise. But that’s perhaps what you get when you write a concept album about a battle that was fought between the Britons and the Anglo Saxons in the early centuries, which was almost lost in the fog of time. Still not much is absolutely sure about the clash, but The Ghost Of Badon Hill does not deal with facts, but with the story as a backdrop for normal people, leading normal lives who are forced to do amazing things to protect themselves and their kind. Like normal musicians, forced to produce amazing records…
For The Ghost Of Badon Hill is amazing once again. The less is more principle seems to work for the songs, turning the compositions into carriers of a longer arc, a story and a history. Dismissing the extra riffs, leaving off the fills, the extra lyrics and everything that wasn’t necessary to tell the tale. The result turns their progressive side into something highly engaging and compulsive, for once opening track Badon begins, you cannot help but listen to the entire legend once again. For we’ve said it before, if you want to tell a story, it’s about setting the scene. And some bands are true masters in that respect. And with The Ghost Of Badon Hill, Sergeant Thunderhoof has become one of them. As the wind gushes around you on that fateful hill, and the acoustic medieval-touched guitar is punctuated by a forlorn whistle, you will be swept up by the mist and carried away to another time and place. That song becomes so much more though, riddled with enchanting harmonies and powerful strides. Slowly building there, with wistful vocals and a warrior’s drum march. And then that drum, like a subdued cannon blast echo from the past launching the composition forwards and into thundering metal, unhurried but so forceful. The guitars get to soar, to lift off, to fly. And so do the vocals. Which is possible due to the bass work and drums that accentuates every detailed rise minutely and in that fashion, lifts every tone to a higher plain of existence. No longer fleeting, the tones seem to linger and stay with you as the others are already washing over you…
We can talk about every song that follows at length, trying to explain what it does to us, what we hear, see and feel, but instead we skip to the end. The other song that bookends this album so brilliantly and seems to be a long lost brother to the opening track in many regards, for that is something both Badon and Beyond The Hill do in a perfect way, be brothers and bookends. It’s the longest track on the album and seems to revolve around itself as the different harmonies and melodies turn and seem to dance around each other. Almost eleven minutes long the guitar flourishes waltz with the riffs as the drums move in a stately procession. Soothing and decreasing in volume, it becomes this quiet natural flowing source before it all swells and becomes voluminous again towards the end. Fulfilling all romantic notions of arcs and storytelling. And as the sound languidly, regretfully, dies down, you hear that the wind has gone to rest and the birds are all that remain on that long lost battlefield. And I knew… From the moment I heard this album, it stays with me still. And I think I will remain here. Listening to it all. Again and again. Up on the hill…
(Written by JK)
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Review for This Sceptered Veil
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