Drudkh
Microcosmos

Air stirred by the sound of ancestral notes. Dreamlike atmosphere. A few seconds to contemplate it, a few seconds to destroy it. Peace is shattered, annihilated by an icy wind, by guitars and drums that seem to produce a snowstorm instead of notes. A riff like only THEY could write. Ecstasy, mystic contemplation. If one possesses a heart capable of reconciling with such music, it's impossible to turn back. Even attempting to press the pause button on the player to stop the song is unthinkable because what flows is not a song, but a blizzard, an emotional storm that destroys every barrier along the way. Trying to stop it is like protecting oneself from an avalanche with bare hands. But when we're fully into the mood, neck-deep in snow, the guitars paint oil portraits on our most arcane sensations, guitar reflections, a solo on an annihilating base that then holds back into meditative and intimate arpeggios. It's impossible to even try to listen to it judiciously, it would be like trying to find a flaw in the girl you've just fallen madly in love with.

Originally there were "Autumn Aurora" and "Forgotten Legends". Then the total desolation of "Blood In Our Wells" and (but only in part) of "Estrangement". Now we're here listening to them again, and what's most surprising is the complete lack of any drop in tone. Not even half, not even small, not even hinted at. Nothing. If "Estrangement" disappointed you, forget it. If some stylistic and atmospheric quirks of the previous albums left you a bit perplexed, leave them behind. If before I was extraordinarily impressed by some songs, if not some individual riffs, now the entire album is an immovable stone block that self-carves into the heart only to shatter in contact with the soul and flow like blood in the veins faster than the wind in a storm.

Drudkh have been reborn.

I couldn't have expected anything better from their new album. I thought they had already said everything with the previous records. "Impossible for them to make me relive the emotions of Autumn Aurora and Blood In Our Wells..." I told myself. I was expecting another half misstep, like "Estrangement" in 2007. And now I find myself here saying that "Microcosmos" has probably become my favorite album of their discography, and asking for forgiveness with my head bowed. Every characteristic of theirs here is amplified to the extreme, annihilating every weak point, as if they had taken the more modern sounds of "Estrangement" and immersed them in the nihilistic mood of "Blood In Our Wells", with the drama of "Anti-Urban" and the arcane and mystical riffs of "Autumn Aurora" and "Forgotten Legends", yet totally resizing the atmospheres.

Undoubtedly, this is their rawest, most direct, and perhaps most heartfelt album. It's no coincidence that the almost ambient atmosphere of the first albums is reduced to the bone: here, the icy sound of the guitars prevails. Like hypnosis from which it's impossible to awaken, they strike at the heart without pause, leaving very little room for escape. There's no time to rest the mind in naturalistic wanderings; here we are constantly bombarded by emotions, always under the fire of a raging river, relentless yet sublime. A summary of their conception of music and, perhaps, of life itself. It feels as if we're living these notes, rather than listening to them. They dig deep and leave no room for escape. Impossible to defend oneself. Hallucinatory. 

This is not an album that can be listened to in a normal way. It requires the right mindset, the predisposition, the right moment, and even more so the right state of mind. Even before putting on headphones, one must be an open door declaring to Drudkh "Yes, now I am free, without defenses, without conceptual constraints, without prejudices. I want nothing more than to live the emotion. Enter, and do with me what you will". They enter. And they do with us what they will (that is, they annihilate us emotionally, if not spiritually). 

The songs flow and, for the first time in their discography, it's not worth distinguishing them. "Decadence" would not be the same without "Distant Cries Of Crane". Each song is a piece of the puzzle, like a single journey, where the first part of the album flows slowly and inexorably like a bulldozer on the soul, and the second part finishes the job, speeding up the drum tempos with "Ars Poetica" which slows down midway to break the accumulated tension, then unravels between a poignant voice that empathizes into a malaise that becomes poetry and riffs that taste of moss, deriving directly from the most arcane forests. And it all finally pours into a song like "Everything Unsaid Before" which is nothing but the squaring of the circle, lost in its contradictions between passionate fury and intimate contemplation. 

Pure musical pantheism, where the gods of the forest become one with the soul, a single entity, nature and man, all of this through pure and simple notes. They seem like only sterile and pompous words, but they gain value when one enters the spirit of the album and grasps the essence.

The staff is nothing more than an instrument to reach out and touch the soul; Drudkh have understood this all too well.