Review Summary: m/
I wonder if Drouth will ever move on to bigger and better things. It seems inauspicious – the position they’ve put themselves in with
Skinwalker – considering the idea that this release is massive and imposing and patently inimical. There’s a brief moment around the midpoint of
Bleak Harvest (which, by the way, is an odyssey you do
not want to get lost on) where the towering, austere metal structures crumble into dust, and we’re left with a brief acoustic interlude. It’s painfully, cruelly short – like a post-apocalyptic scene, as we watch a small animal crawl out from the debris, engendering a modicum of hope, only for the thing to be crushed under the tattered boot of that one guy with the respiratory mask from Mad Max.
I suppose this is one of those records where every corner, every nook, cranny and crevice can be described as
‘violent’.
Black Lungs is a stalking kind of violence. Those stampeding drum fills and those serrated guitars trail slowly behind us; menacing, playing with their food, before the vocals (unique and blistering, even for black metal’s standards) blaze a trail through the very centre.
Skinwalker is violent, too; sadistically so, in fact. The opening riff – as lugubrious as it is – feels like a wake-up call. It’s bitterly cold – manifesting a layer of frost, of thaw, before the blastbeats and harrowing shrieks (a marriage much like cheese and wine) reduce all expectations and notions of trust to rubble. By the time the final notes burrow their way back underground, the ill-intent hangs in the air like some blackened, corrupted soul, lingering just to spite whatever it left behind. And then we – the royal we, in this instance – are left with that same angle of rumination: Is it possible to amplify the intensity from here? Can the grave be dug any deeper? Why do Drouth insist on using their hands to dig it? I feel like these guys have the capacity to keep plumbing the depths; that is, whenever they decide to expel the rest of their demons. This, I guess, is because the lyrics (which perfectly mirror the sound/style) exist in the narrow margin between gratuitousness and genuinely chilling poetry. They’re not at all pleasant, nor do they care about conveying a message, but that’s the point:
Skinwalker is selfish. It’s sinister and hellish, and it’s invariably, unequivocally upset that you’re not paying attention to what is has to say.
