Drudkh - A Furrow Cut Short
Season Of Mist
Black Metal
7 songs (58:50)
Release year: 2015
Season Of Mist
Reviewed by Goat
Major event

Drudkh are well-known for their nationalist pride for their Ukrainian homeland, a pride sung loud and clear on this, their tenth full-length. Those who follow current events will be aware of the military crisis that the country is undergoing still at the time of writing due to intervention by Russia, and the band cannot have remained unaffected by this, their hometown of Kharkiv not on the frontlines but suffering a bomb in February and currently being aided by the UN Refugee Agency. It's not the first time I've found the band's 'no interview' policy frustrating, as the effect of real war on black metal's preaching of spiritual war would be fascinating. Still, without knowing the band's thoughts and even with the language barrier of the Ukrainian lyrics, taken wholly from the works of Ukrainian poets such as Oleg Olschytsch and Nicholas Vingranovsky, A Furrow Cut Short is full of the passion and emotion that you would expect, furious and melancholic all at once.

It's the best album from Drudkh in years, possibly since their mid 00s career peak. The band's formula of folk-imbued post-Burzum black metal can drag if not sufficiently imbued with emotion, but at its best is as hypnotic as the best from the genre, and that peak is hit several times on A Furrow Cut Short. Forgoing the usual intro piece, the album launches immediately into Cursed Sons I, initially melancholic before building into something dark and ominous as the riffs turn from blurry, shapeless ambience into a more sharp-edged metallic form – a perfect introduction and a great song at once. The following Cursed Sons II is more stately and epic initially, before allowing the speedier, more melodic riffs to take the lead and do the band's usual (excellent) trick of building epic structures, complete with the folky breakdown that earlier albums did so well.

The epic elements are built on with the following To the Epoch of Unbowed Poets and Embers, the band's ambient guitar constructions making a wall of beautiful sound that turns aggressive and angry. There's none of the dullness that marred Eternal Turn of the Wheel, and given the faster, even more furious pace of Dishonour I and the thundering doominess of Dishonour II, there's more to sink your teeth into. I complained about the band being boringly competent in the past, but this is far from boring, and more than competent. The closing hypnotic flurry of Til Foreign Ground Shall Cover Eyes is alone worth the price, that and the album as a whole a reminder of the Swan Road days when the band truly deserved their plaudits. Worth investigation.

Killing Songs :
Cursed Sons II, To the Epoch of Unbowed Poets, Embers, Til Foreign Ground Shall Cover Eyes
Goat quoted 85 / 100
Other albums by Drudkh that we have reviewed:
Drudkh - They Often See Dreams About the Spring reviewed by Goat and quoted 87 / 100
Drudkh - Eastern Frontier in Flames reviewed by Goat and quoted no quote
Drudkh - Eternal Turn Of The Wheel reviewed by Goat and quoted 75 / 100
Drudkh - Forgotten Legends reviewed by Tony and quoted 99 / 100
Drudkh - Handful Of Stars reviewed by Goat and quoted 87 / 100
To see all 12 reviews click here
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