JAVIER GÁLVEZ-Guitars and vocals
SERGIO ROBLES-Bass
JULEN GIL-Drums
Influences
Motorhead, Soundgarden, Bolt Thrower...
Sounds Like
This debut album from the Spanish stoner/doom/thrash band Rhino has just been picked up by the American label Arctic Music for rerelease here in the States later this year, but we've got the original Spanish release from Odio Sonoro here, and fans of ultra heavy stoner metal will bug out for Rhino's ferocious blend of brutal sludgecore, soaring dark rock, and ragged thrash metal. Imagine a cross between High On Fire, Alice In Chains circa Dirt, Danzig's first two albums, Kreator, and Crowbar, with an awesome, deep, soulful lead singer, and you'll have a rough idea of what Rhino sounds like...sure, those references do kind of look odd together, but that's the best comparison I can come up for Rhino. They've managed to create a masive riff heavy sound that is ULTRA catchy and impossibly rockin', enough that I easily see these guys getting HUGE with fans of stuff like Black Label Society, but Breed The Chosen One is way, way heavier than anything you'd hear on rock radio, with one foot in raw doom metal and the other in bestial, old school thrash metal, at times channeling the sound of High On Fire's Blessed Black Wings backed up by a chorus of undead Layne Staley's, or Slayer forcefed a steady diet of Southern Lord albums. Man, I love this album, and I've been playing it nonstop since it came in. Awesome riffs, thunderous drumming, wicked vocals that switch between sick tortured howling to that Layne Staley-style croon, massive stretches of molten doom, ugh....this album rules. The artwork is awesome, all black and red illustrations of goat's heads and demonic thugs, and the song titles are pure luciferian kitsch: ""Name The Horn Bearer", "Exposed To The Rotten Sun", aND "Goat Behind The Gates" stand out as some of my favorites. And that awesome final track "Goat Behind The Gates" recasts Alice In Chains as pure Sabbathian doom...awesome. Sure, alot of Rhino's lyrics are flat-out dumb and read like Glenn Danzig's writings on PCP, but it works fine with Rhino's brand of crushing biker doomthrash.
Nice package for this album, with a six-panel digipack and 12-page accompanying booklet.
CRUCIAL BLAST (USA)
With no accompanying press release,
sparse information in the booklet and
very little to be found on t..internet,
Spain..s Rhino must be more than happy
to let their music do the talking for
them. Part stoner doom, part thrash,
this is as heavy as their moniker
suggests. Had Metallica recorded
"St Anger" as a Down/Goatsnake
tribute and invited Spice (Ex-Spiritual Beggars)
to add his immense voice,
"Breed The Chosen One" could have
been the result. If this sounds promising
as a blueprint, the reality is even better.
"Name The Horn Bearer" and the epic closer
"Goat Behind The Gates" are simply stunning
examples of pure doom, while
"Loaded With Thunder" echoes proto-thrashers
Hellhammer. Safe to say that if Rhino were
American they..d have been snapped up by
a major label by now. But just for the
moment they remain our little secret.
TERRORIZER (UK), 8 out of 10
RHINO
BREED THE CHOSEN ONE (2007)
1 Name the horn bearer
2 Standing Ram
3 Loaded with thunder
4 Descenso
5 Chosen
6 Temple
7 Scorn
8 Exposed to the rotten sun
9 Goat behind the gates
DEAD THRONE MONARCH (2008)
1 Dead throne monarch
2 Reins of the warlord
3 Earth reclaims the usurper
4 Bahamüt
5 Pale horses coming
6 Funebre
7 Wolf among black sheep
8 Promise of storm
9 Wendigo
10 Horned Crown
