SETTING a sombre tone for the band’s new album, Drudkh’s Shadow Play opens with Scattering the Ashes, as the recording of a person walking through the forest plays, with the rustle of dry leaves crunching beneath their feet eventually giving way to fuzzed-out, acoustic guitars.
However, it would not be far removed to imagine the opening could also be a recording of a Ukrainian walking through what was once their home, now reduced into the ash and debris of a city shelled and levelled by artillery fire.
Returning to the Ukrainian band’s atmospheric and pagan roots, Drudkh once again demonstrates its power under this particular branch of black metal through Shadow Play. Coming at a time when many of the band’s peers are “modernising” their sound, Roman Saenko and Thurios lead Drudkh back to the spirits of the forest and Ukraine.
The marked return to its old style is distinguishable from Drudkh’s previous outputs, particularly All Belong to the Night from late 2022, which came with a far more aggressive black metal sound that stemmed from the rage boiling over the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began earlier that year.
That is not to say Shadow Play is gentle. Though the tracks are undoubtedly melancholic and at times, utterly depressing, Drudkh’s sound and scope is reflected in the songs’ complexity. Rather than the explosive aggression of recent past releases, Shadow Play is closer to an unassuming tempest.
It is very much a product of its time, with Saenko, Thurios and their countrymen now three years deep into the invasion of their country. Tracks such as April, Fallen Blossom and The Eve capture the mixture of emotions that have beset the people of Ukraine in sweeping musical canvasses of dread, fury and hopelessness, layered over with vocals that howl and shriek anguished cries of desperation in the band’s native tongue.
Though black metal is often riddled by musicians who live completely different realities from the visage they put on through their music and on-stage, this is not the case with Drudkh or its new album. Shadow Play is elevated by the morbid, authentic, lived-in war-torn reality that Drudkh currently faces, which is itself tragic even if the album is a triumph.
Shadow Play is available on streaming platforms.
