Mongolian rock group The Hu – who became an online sensation when they released music videos for “Wolf Totem” and “Yuve Yuve Yu”, racking up a combined 28 million views to date – announce the release of their debut album, The Gereg.
The four-piece band combines traditional Mongolian instruments with modern American hard rock to create their own genre of music they call “hunnu rock,” which derives from “HU,” the Mongolian root word for human beings. Hunnu Rock is a combination of Mongolian traditional music and western rock music. The genre is very dynamic it can be metal, but it can also be classic rock. The most unique thing about their style is the Mongolian throat singing, which is an amazing sound that humans make which creates the upper and lower harmony together.
The HU will be making their European live debut from this June, for a run of summer festivals and tour dates. They play Sama’Rock Festival andEurockeennes De Belfort Festival (France), Download Festival (UK), Tons of Rock Festival (Norway) and GraspopFestival (Belgium), plus UK performances in Brighton, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow and London(amongst others. First time shows in London, Manchester, Warsaw and Amsterdam are already sold out!
Check out latest single Shoog Shoog below!
We caught up with lead throat singer Gala from The Hu as he talked about the band’s previous single and more!
So how proud are you of the releases of Yuve Yuve Yu and Wolf Totem so far?
We are very happy of the reactions we have had from fans around the world. We are very humbled to receive this much attention and we hope to reach even more people.
Did you thought both these songs would be as big as they are?
We always wished that it would be big but we obviously weren’t to know that it would receive so much attention which we are very happy about
Can you tell us something about the singles no one else knows?
When we filmed the Yvue Yvue Yu video we travelled over 5000 km of road as we wanted to show the world how beautiful and diverse the landscapes in Mongolia are. For example one day we would be filming in the desert. Everybody was so hot and just in t-shirts. But the next day we would travel to the highest mountain in Mongolia which was -15 and there we were so cold we could hardly play. It was so much fun to make!
You have an album set to be released this summer titled The Gereg, can you tell us a bit more about this?
The Gereg album includes a lot of important messages that we want to tell the world. There will be a track about why women are important in our culture, which should be a general message to the world. Another song will be about Gereg, which was the first diplomatic passport introduced to the world by our accentors. The general theme of the album is to unite against injustices and have courage.
So you also have a European tour coming up, what venue are you most looking forward to playing?
I am so excited about the entire tour, there isn’t a single stage that im looking forward to more than another. Every single stage is important to me and we will do our best performance on every stage
If you could work with any band on a new song, who would it be and why?
We want to do great things and work with many bands throughout our career but personally I would like to work with Slipknot.
What’s the alternative scene like in Mongolia at the moment?
There are lot of things going on in the Mongolian music scene right now. We have a lot of bands from lots of genres including Hip Hop, Pop, Dance music and Rock bands but right now a lot of our traditional Mongolian bands are receiving more attention.