Lmst

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

#2025 #35 #Ails #AmericanMetal #Anicon #BlackMetal #BlackQueen #Contempt #Cormorant #DeadToADyingWorld #Drouth #EternalWarfareRecords #Immortal #Isenordal #Ludicra #May25 #MelodicBlackMetal #MoYnoq #Review #Reviews #TheTeethOfTime #URSA #VerminWomb #VictoryOverTheSun

"Our piggies need slop."

Open your mind for this album in @DXMacGuffin's #ProgTuesday:

#Flummox: Southern Progress

https://album.link/i/1788810242

#AvantGardeMetal #QueerPossumCore

FFO #TheAtomicBombAudition #StolenBabies #VictoryOverTheSun

“victory over the sun” (1913)

Sandro Ricaldone

VICTORY OVER THE SUN
St. Petersburg, 1913

Victory over the Sun (Победа над Cолнцем; Pobeda nad Solntsem) is a Russian Futurist opera premiered in 1913 at the Luna Park in Saint Petersburg.

The libretto written in zaum language was contributed by Alexei Kruchenykh, the music was written by Mikhail Matyushin, the prologue was added by Velimir Khlebnikov, and the stage designer was Kazimir Malevich. The performance was organized by the artistic group Soyuz Molodyozhi.

The opera was intended to underline parallels between literary text, musical score, and the art of painting, and featured a cast of such extravagant characters as Nero and Caligula in the Same Person, Traveller through All the Ages, Telephone Talker, The New Ones, etc.

#AlexeiKruchenykh #art #arte #ПобеданадCолнцем #Futurism #Futurist #KazimirMalevich #libretto #LunaPark #MikhailMatyushin #music #opera #PobedaNadSolntsem #RussianFuturist #SaintPetersburg #SoyuzMolodyozhi #teatro #theater #VelimirKhlebnikov #VictoryOverTheSun #Zaum #zaumLanguage

Victory Over the Sun – Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

By Dear Hollow

Victory Over the Sun is a project of the Portland-based multi-instrumentalist Vivian Tylińska who, along with Jute Gyte’s Adam Kalmbach and Kostnatění’s D.L., represents the diversity and power of the unorthodox take of microtonal black metal. You’ll find Tylińska is more inspired by Liturgy than Darkthrone, touches upon Kayo Dot more than Mayhem, actualizing a more triumphant and avant-garde take on black metal – although her more blackened passages are nothing short of vicious. As loose and freeform as jazz and as organic and fluid as classical, fourth full-length Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! balances the razor’s edge between traditional and otherworldly, exploring the niches and crevices in each crooked composition.

Victory Over the Sun is not inspired by the status quo, as Tylińska’s aim is not to warp listeners back to the glory days of black metal – she’s just a “girl who makes noise.” Microtonal black metal has found itself more and more a vessel for the queer and members of LGBTQIA+ to express self-discovery and identity. Victory Over the Sun is no different, the work of a trans woman offering a further intellectual layer with each theme steeped in the futurist art and music of the early 20th century. Utilizing a blend of dense and shimmering, movements are founded upon a motif that reoccurs throughout each track, revisited intensity and hypnotic repetition. Opener “Thorn Woos the Wound” is the best example, a nearly seventeen-minute foray into shimmering atmospherics and triumphant chord progressions alongside blastbeats and plods, as well as Tylińska’s blackened screech. “Madeline Becoming Judy” and “The Gold of Having Nothing” offer a similar aura, simple plucking and drumbeats collapsing into blastbeats and raw tremolo, to return to its off-kilter rhythms and a patiently sprawling wall of uncanny valley melody, motifs taking on a burning, searing quality.

You will certainly find your share of brutality, particularly in the shortest track “WHEEL” and closer “Black Heralds.” The former is an absolute mammoth of a track, a work of contrast due to the most optimistic lyrics of the album colliding with the most sinister riff, a crawling beast with more similarity to Portal than to Mayhem – hypnotic and funereal, otherworldly and vicious. Meanwhile, “Black Heralds” features a weighty riff to complement the darker plucking that saturates it, a smooth crescendo from ominous dripping plucking and hollow synths to a massive riff that feels like something out of Sunn O)))’s Black One. The album progression in this way maneuvers between the more exploratory songwriting and its darker conclusions, reflecting the pessimism of its lyrics (a poem by Cesar Vallejo).

Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! is an album that requires much to unpack. Every movement is intentional, with repetition used to searing proportions and melody thoughtful and patient rather than attaining to some “trve kvlt” standard. Victory Over the Sun not only stands as a landmark for LGBTQIA+ representation in a masculine-dominated style of music, but sets the bar for the burgeoning style of microtonal black metal. It’s exploratory in the best ways while ensuring that the experience of this strange type of music is not lost in the lushness – shimmering but punishing. Balancing more triumphant passages with an underworldly darkness, both undergirded by reckless and fearless songwriting, Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! is one of the best albums of the year, comfortably settling Tylińska and Victory Over the Sun – more than just the product of a “girl who makes noise” – into the upper echelon of experimental black metal.

Tracks to Check Out: ”Thorn Woos the Wound,” “WHEEL,” and “Black Heralds”

#2023 #Apr23 #DanceYouMonsterToMySoftSong_ #Darkthrone #JuteGyte #KayoDot #Kostnatění #Liturgy #Mayhem #Portal #SelfRelease #SunnO_ #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2023 #VictoryOverTheSun