DRUDKH — Пісні скорботи і самітності (Songs of Grief and Solitude) (review)

DRUDKH — Пісні скорботи і самітності (Songs of Grief and Solitude) album cover

Album · 2006 · Non-Metal

1/5 · 2011-08-22
Conor Fynes

'Songs Of Grief & Solitude' - Drudkh (2/10)

There may not be a style of music so earthly and connected to nature as folk. Folk, by its very nature is meant to be beautiful in its simplicity, and can let a listener sink into equal parts nostalgia and a bond with their surroundings. As a style of music that is so connected with primal forces, it should not come as much surprise that many bands in the black metal genre are attracted towards the warmth of folk. Drudkh is a band who has let nature worship drive their music from their inception onward, and from the second album 'Autumn Aurora', there have been sounds of Ukrainian folk music infused with their typical style of atmospheric black metal. 'Songs Of Grief & Solitude' is Drudkh's fourth outing, and instead of merely adopting folk into their sound this time around, they have made an album that sheds any of their metal leanings, leaving a pure arboreal folk album. I have loved it most times when good black metal bands take neofolk to heart, and that is precisely why I find myself so surprised that I cannot find much good to say about this album. Drudkh's intentions may have been all well, but the execution of the album has led to a lukewarm mess, consistently dispassionate from the first song through to the last.

First to describe the sound; there is nothing save for a set of acoustic guitars, and a whistling flute. Even with so little, ingenious things can still be worked out, but Drudkh seems to have missed the boat on that one. Here, they disprove the fallacy that 'less is more', and with nothing gained, they have shed most of the dreamy atmosphere that the electric guitars gave to their sound. The production here is raw and dingy, and there is nothingness in between guitar parts. There is nothing to keep the listener holding on, nothing done in the studio to make the album sound professional. I could go as far as saying this whole project sounds like the band sat around at lunch time, threw some ideas together on acoustic guitar, recorded them throughout the afternoon, threw in a little flute noodling, and had themselves a new album by nightfall. The album truly feels that half- assed in virtually every respect.

The songwriting and performance here does not stir the imagination, and I can even recognize ideas on the acoustic guitar here that they stole from earlier albums. 'Why The Sun Becomes Sad' has a distinctive riff plucked from 'Autumn Aurora', and there's been nothing done to show it in a new light here, except that it is strummed slowly with an acoustic guitar. There is sometimes a visible effort to have melodies in the music, but there is never anything sufficiently memorable or beautiful, the only sense of feeling that gets across here is that of apathy. Drudkh is a great band, and have created some incredible atmospheric black metal, so I am that much more surprised by how little that translates onto an unplugged setting. This is a tragically disappointing album, especially due to the fact that by all means, a neofolk incarnation of Drudkh should have been excellent.