REVIEW: Drudkh ‘A Handful of Stars’ (Season of Mist)

While their politics may be forever enshrouded in the murky fog rolling down off the Carpathians, the actual sonics of Ukrainian atmospheric black metal hermits Drudkh have gained considerable clarity and focus over the last couple of releases, and the hype has undeniably grown with them. There’s a lightness of touch to ‘A Handful of Stars’, moreso than the breakthrough, magazine-moistening ‘Microcosmos’, and simplicity to the interplay between harsh, strained, typically black metal exhortations and emotive, earth mother instrumentals which sees the band bob gently into a vague orbit in the overpopulated, debris-cluttered airspace between post-metal and post-crust, the guitar lines that open ‘Twilight Aureole’ having more than a twinge of Swedish progressive metal chestpounders Burst about them, while the weeping guitar that close ‘The Day Will Come’ seem liberated from one of those dad-friendly ‘driving song’ compilations with a bad ass rig on cover.

Were this any other band than one so stubbornly committed to reclusive cave-dwelling mysticism, it’d be an obvious plea for commercial success - the beefier production, the more accessible melodies lacking the density and primal thunder of, say, 2004’s ‘Autumn Aurora’, are easily the meandering, woodland equivalent of Anaal Nathrakh’s exchange of bowel-loosening, grime-caked terror for more moshpit-friendly party hits. But the crucial difference is that Anaal Nathrakh made their transition without losing their might, and somewhere in the recording process, Drudkh’s once formidable elemental fury that threatened to swallow up the listener like an angry forest with a big angry mouth, has been considerably diminished. ‘A Handful of Stars’ is a fine place for a picnic, the view is chocolate box lovely and the thorns have been cleared from the path, but it makes for an underwhelming full-length when set aside landmarks from their potent past.