Howling Giant finally made their Paris debut opening for Godsleep at Supersonic Records, and while the turnout may have been lighter than the music deserved, the enthusiasm inside the room quickly compensated for the lack of bodies. From the first few riffs onward, it became obvious that the Nashville trio had not come to gently introduce themselves to the French public.
Musically, Howling Giant sit somewhere between the crushing weight of Mastodon and the desert-rock hypnosis of Kyuss, though that description only tells part of the story. Beneath the colossal riffs and elephantine grooves lurks a distinctly Southern psychedelic streak, one that occasionally pushes the songs toward jam-band territory without ever sacrificing impact. The result is a sound that feels simultaneously grounded and hallucinatory, capable of locking into a massive groove one minute before drifting into something spacier and more exploratory the next.
What ultimately makes the band compelling, however, is their complete lack of artifice. At a moment where so much modern heavy music seems obsessed with technological excess, aesthetic gimmickry or algorithm-friendly precision, Howling Giant operate according to far older principles. Volume, groove, dynamics and riffs delivered with conviction and, crucially, joy. Nothing cybernetic, nothing sterilized, no tricks hiding behind the heaviness, just four friends generating an enormous amount of noise and momentum together in a room.
If there is such a thing as the future of heavy music, it may well sound less futuristic than people expect. Actually, it might sound a lot like these guys.
