Drouth – The Teeth of Time Review

By Dear Hollow

There are bands that check all the boxes from a quick gander at the promo. Yeah, sure it’s black metal, but the name Drouth is just fun to say.1 The title The Teeth of Time is just tantalizingly terrific. That cover is appropriately terrifying and unique. Don’t expect me to listen to the advance track – I’m on it, hoss. The problem is that such behavior led me to an average score of 2.3 in 2022, when I dedicated myself entirely to the blackened arts. What can I say? The dark blacky whacky looks cool as hell so much of the time. That being said, will Drouth be a bounty of rewards beneath its shimmer or is it just a whitewashed tomb?

Drouth is a black metal band from Portland, formed in 2014. Born from the ashes of Contempt and featuring caliber from acts like Vermin Womb, Ursa, Cormorant, and Black Queen, they have released a plethora of blackened breeds, impressing with their range but lacking identity: debut Knives, Labyrinths, Mirrors fully immersed itself into the mellow meloblack pond while follow-up Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy laid an icy finger upon death-doom’s more weighty moods. In this way, while firmly entrenched in the former, Drouth engages in a more feral and unhinged approach reminiscent of other American black metal acts like Mo’ynoq or Anicon, shredding tremolo and layered melodic overlays colliding in an overwhelming and tastefully concocted experience.

Drouth manages to strike a fine balance: layers of melody and a pristine production. The Teeth of Time’s foundation of rabid tremolo, bouncing around with an energy and fire, is complemented by an unhinged percussion performance that utterly rips into the next dimension. The sound drips with iciness that recalls Immortal but without the bogged-down drama. The diminished chord progression that everyone and his kvlt dog uses appears only sporadically (“Through a Glass, Darkly,” “Exult, Ye Flagellant”), replaced by a yearning melody that feels desperate and vicious in equal measure. Muscular riffage bolsters this approach with a death metal-inspired weight that kicks things into high gear while emerging from the fray in moments of clarity (“False Grail,” “Through a Glass…”), while melodies are unique in their sounding both haunting and heart-wrenching (“Hurl Your Thunderbolt Even Unto Death,” title track, “Through a Glass…”). The production and mixing are clear and clean, offering a rawness drenched in reverb without losing the individual elements – the drum production in particular is organic and relentless in equal measure.

While the majority of the album focuses on unhinged melodic second-wave shenanigans, there are moments of experimentation that are scattered into the latter half. Closer “Exult, Ye Flagellants” is perhaps the best example. While generally aligning with the American black metal template, the doom flavors of Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy appear most prominently in a dreary and mysterious dirge, only hinted at in earlier tracks (“False Grail”). The passage of flaying dissonance halfway through (vaguely hinted at in “Through a Glass…”), a layered haunted plucking that recalls microtonal acts like Victory Over the Sun, is a tad out of place but nonetheless impressive. Guest vocals provided by Ails and former Ludicra alum Laurie Sue Shanaman and Christy Cather in the title track, “Hurl Your Thunderbolt…,” and “False Grail” inject a dose of fiery energy, while Dead to a Dying World and Isenordal violist Eva Aldridge adds a somber dimension to “False Grail” and “Through a Glass, Darkly.”

One thing that Drouth does very well is make black metal sound pretty decent – good, even. Even though it takes repeated spins to unearth its treasures beneath the feral attack of layered melodies and muscular riffs, and the bass sometimes gets lost in the buzz of second-wave, The Teeth of Time is solid as fuck. Offering five tracks in a reasonable forty-one minutes, you have time to ponder but plenty of time to be thrashed about. While Drouth has experimented in prior releases, I hope the sound on The Teeth of Time is here to stay. Drouth offers bounty aplenty beneath its appealing exterior: get bitten or bite me.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Eternal Warfare Records
Websites: drouth.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/drouthpdx
Releases Worldwide: May 16th, 2025

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Isenordal – Requiem for Eirênê Review

By El Cuervo

There’s one music quality I treasure above all else: dynamism. Without conscious thought I find myself drifting towards music in the promo pool promising varied or creative music. In the case of Washington’s Isenordal, the one sheet for their third full-length release, entitled Requiem for Eirênê, described music fusing funeral doom, black metal and neofolk. Few albums pledge such dynamism so I was eager to hear their take on this blend, and discover whether it would be as exciting as the description.

At first brush, Eirênê appears to adopt the lengthy, slow style of funeral doom, comprising just four main tracks running over eleven minutes each with a brief interlude in the middle. The real position is a little more varied. “A Moment Approaches Eternity” opens with an organ, cello and wind samples, which build a contemplative mood before the big but slow doom commences with heavy chords and a string section. Blackened screeches herald the arrival of black metal proper after a few minutes, developing the song with a new pace and intensity. Likewise, the back half of this track also conveys the greatest strength of the record; namely, its gradual but satisfying song progressions. The song smoothly flows between its core styles, from blackened barrages to stomping rhythms and back again. Isenordal leverage lots of sounds but weaves them together reasonably harmoniously.

When Eirênê blends its doom and black metal across its heavy passages, it’s at its best. The highlights feel climactic and overwhelming, including parts from “A Moment Approaches Eternity” and “Epiphanies of Abhorrence and Futility.” Isenordal find a way of making their heavy music unpredictable and intriguing. Sadly this contrasts strongly with the softer moments. While the two aforementioned tracks avoid the lethargy I tend to associate with doom metal, “Await Me Ultima Thule” and “Requiem for Eirênê” have it in spades. The melodies are pleasant at best, boring at worst. I like music that balances heavy with light but the apathy I experience over the opening five minutes of “Await Me Ultima Thule” demonstrate that Isenordal’s light qualities are unable to balance the stronger heavier ones into wholly enjoyable songs. The eleven minutes of this track feel much longer than the fifteen of the opener. This feeling extends into the short-but-feels-long piano-led interlude. I like Isenordal when they’re aiming for grand. But they’re nowhere near as good at being delicate.

Moreover, the few notable guitar leads (the rhythmic stomp from 9:15 on “A Moment Approaches Eternity,” the blackened maelstrom from 2:15 on “Epiphanies of Abhorrence and Futility”) highlight their general absence otherwise. I’m not left with a sense that Eirênê is stuffed with great riffs, which is an issue for a metal album. The leads are also buried in the mix by the rhythms, piano and strings. Metal with strings tends to form the dynamic music I enjoy most but here the ornamentation at the expense of the lead guitars which should occupy the core of the album. I also find an unfavorable weight devoted to the vocals as the death vox are deep and powerful, but the floating cleans are comparatively forgettable. There’s more of the latter when the former is clearly superior, contributing to the sense that the metal elements are subjugated to the non-metal ones, to Eirênê’s detriment.

Eirênê represents a chunky package; lengthy, but also densely compacted with detailed and varied music. Afforded the right headspace, it can have an impressive impact. But the music isn’t consistently strong enough – nor does it always focus on the right qualities – to demand my praise throughout. There’s an exciting band in Isenordal, but too much of the music on Eirênê is unexciting.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Prophecy Productions
Websites: bandcamp.isenordal.com | facebook.com/isenordal
Releases Worldwide: March 8th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AmericanMetal #BlackMetal #FuneralDoomMetal #Isenordal #Mar24 #ProphecyProductions #RequiemForEirênê #Review #Reviews