Drudkh
Autumn Aurora

The night was cold, but it didn't scare him: he was used to the thermal excursions of this period, and his skin, hardened by old age and the many springs spent outdoors herding cattle, had seen far worse frosts.

With difficulty (oh how his years were beginning to weigh him down) he crossed the hill and found himself facing the Moon: large, full, shining, and extraordinarily close. Taken by a wave of solitude, unusual for him, he threw the stick to the ground, leaned against a nearby tree, and began to converse with the Celestial Body, as one does with an older sister.

And he wondered what sense it made to wake up every morning, gather his belongings, and walk all day with his flock, then return home (when he managed to do so) in the evening, completely exhausted, only to start again the next day. "In this sense," he said to the Moon, "we are similar ... But don't you ever get tired? Aren't you disgusted by these meadows, these valleys, these roads by now?"

Reflecting, he then noticed that there was a difference (and perhaps it was a good thing), human life is just a continuous race, from the cradle to a horrid abyss, always with a burden on the shoulders: it has, for better or for worse, an end sooner or later. "And you, instead," he said, "you are destined for eternity to make this journey, back and forth, and you never have peace. But maybe, what does it matter to you, you're not even mortal, what do you care about us ants?"

And he thought that indeed human life is suffering from birth (the newborn's cry is the immediate awareness of this), and that parents themselves should give up bringing a new creature into the world, if they know it will have to struggle to live. He was then moved, and with a bitter smile raised his eyes again and asked her: "But what do I know, after all, of universal life, I a poor wandering shepherd of Asia! Who is up there in the sky with you? What are those stars for? And this immensity, why does it seem to tighten around my heart, block my breath, fill my lungs, and leave me with this incurable melancholy and loneliness? And I, who am I?"

The shepherd then lowered his gaze, towards his sheep who, placidly, rested on the grass. He wondered if it wouldn't have been better to be born as one of them, who peacefully spend their life in boredom, ask no questions, and care only for basic needs. "My sheep," he said, "why, lying in idleness, are you at peace with yourselves, while for me tedium and inactivity are sources of pain and discontent?"

Then, after a long pause, he turned to the Moon again, and almost in farewell said to her:

"Or perhaps it's far from true,

Gazing at another's fate, my thought:

Perhaps in what form, in what

State it may be, in den or cradle,

It is disastrous for whoever is born the natal day."

Having said this, a tear fell from his glassy eyes. He wiped it away with the rough handkerchief, took the stick again, called his sheep to him, and slowly disappeared into the horizon.

The magic of an album like "Autumn Aurora" is perceptible and tangible from the very start. In their second studio attempt, the Ukrainian Drudkh impress on five tracks of rare and majestic epicness, the power of nature, the sense of mystical abandonment to its elusive beauty, combining it all with the desperate rage typical of a black metal with strong pagan and pantheistic connotations.

A remarkably impactful album, capable of piercing the listener's heart from the first moment, "Autumn Aurora" remains, even today, eight years after its release, one of the highest compositional peaks achieved by the Ukrainian combo.