{"id":759062,"date":"2026-09-03T22:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/759062\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:56:10","slug":"hanternoz-a-hed-an-noz-a-noz-a-noz-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/759062\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanternoz – A Hed an Noz, a Noz, a Noz Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of the things I enjoy most about folk metal is that I never know exactly what I\u2019m going to hear until I press play. This is, of course, due to the fact that folk music in general varies so widely depending on the region from which it originates. Hyver, who runs the label Antiq Records in France, has been crafting medieval-style folk\/black metal under various musical projects for some time now. Twelve found plenty to praise in 2021\u2019s Au Fleuve de Loire,<\/a> notwithstanding its patchwork nature. The latest collection of Hanternoz songs is each about a different type of devil from Breton folklore. From what I can gather, A Hed an Noz, a Noz, a Noz loosely translates as \u201cAt Night, At Night, At Night\u201d in Breton. Does this album go bump in the night or does it fall with a flat thud?<\/p>\n

A Hed an Noz should sound familiar to those who have heard Hyver\u2019s other work. The bread and butter is still the heroic trem-picked guitars and gallant drumming that one can also hear from V\u00e9h\u00e9mence<\/a> or (to a lesser extent) Grylle<\/a>. Hyver\u2019s vocals are as chameleonic as ever, adopting many different shades of demonic rasps, growls, and groans that embody the album\u2019s theme. This diversity in vocal styles is fortunate because the diversity of instrumentation has greatly diminished. This time, Hanternoz mostly takes the Cnoc An Tursa<\/a> approach of examining folk music through a metal lens without much in the way of actual folk instruments, which are sequestered to the lone instrumental interlude \u201cPe trouz War an Douar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ufeffA Hed an Noz, a Noz, a Noz by Hanternoz<\/a><\/p>\n

The fact that the bag of tricks from which Hanternoz draws is much smaller ends up holding back A Hed an Noz. It\u2019s a sizable step backward from Au Fleuve de Loire, where the folk music and synths were woven directly into the black metal in a more energetic and dynamic fashion. Hanternoz may have taken to heart Twelve\u2019s prior observation of the compositions feeling stitched together because A Hed an Noz is certainly more cohesive, but at the cost of much of its zeal. To be fair, this is not an issue across the board. Most notably, \u201cLa Lessive des Tr\u00e9pass\u00e9s\u201d is punchy and to the point, with Joanna Maeyens\u2019 guest vocals overlapping enchantingly with the predominant growls. The production of A Hed an Noz is nice and crisp, especially with regard to the bass mixing, which greatly enriches the guitar lines (\u201cLa Peste \u00e0 Limoges,\u201d \u201cQuand j\u2019ai tu\u00e9 le Roi de la For\u00eat\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yet, these promising core elements of A Hed an Noz are undermined by an overreliance on repetition. Opener \u201cSur le Chemin des f\u00e9es\u201d is somehow galloping and plodding at the same time, the triumphant guitars becoming muted as they build up again and again towards a payoff that never comes after nearly 12 minutes. Closing track \u201cQuand j\u2019ai tu\u00e9 le Roi de la For\u00eat\u201d gets stuck in a mid-paced rut, resulting in a more lethargic sensation than should be warranted given the valiant guitar leads. The long-form songwriting in \u201cLa Peste \u00e0 Limoges\u201d fares better, centered around an infectious, bouncy groove which gets my head bobbing, though the midsection is a tad protracted and disjointed. The charismatic vocal delivery helps but isn\u2019t enough to overcome the fact that no song on A Hed an Noz is justified in being over 6 minutes long, yet most of them are.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, A Hed an Noz left less and less of an impression on me the more time I spent with it. The delightful unpredictability from Au Fleuve de Loire is simply not present here. I am left puzzled as to why Hanternoz decided to discard the majority of the toolkit that served them well in the past. There is a fair amount of decent material here that would have done better without as much padding, and it\u2019s worth a listen by anyone who enjoys Hyver\u2019s take on medieval black metal. Just expect less medieval and more monotony this time around.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.5\/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Antiq Records<\/a>
Websites: antiqofficial.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/people\/Hanternoz-Pagan-de-Bretagne<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: August 3rd, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the things I enjoy most about folk metal is that I never know exactly what I\u2019m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[13410,47816,250647,250648,241799,28214,188961,96,22739,69268,250649,250650,101181,128,263,129,56,54,55,250651],"class_list":["post-759062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-2-5","tag-47816","tag-a-hed-an-noz-a-noz-a-noz","tag-antiq-records","tag-aug26","tag-black-metal","tag-cnoc-an-tursa","tag-entertainment","tag-folk-metal","tag-french-metal","tag-grylle","tag-hanternoz","tag-medieval-black-metal","tag-music","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vehemence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}