Style: Hypnotic black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: History and people of Ukraine
Thoughts: A dark wind blows from the east, a solitary guitar laments the violence that is to come. The sorrow and blood that will stain these lands is written in the chronicle of the Eternal Circle.
Drudkh are a spotty band with me. The first few albums were unlike anything I had ever heard before. The combination of atmosphere and mid paced hypnotic riffing was completely new to me. After a bit though, the band stopped releasing essential albums and the releases became less consistent.
Estrangement seemed uninspired, the acoustic album... while decent, was no where near the level that some of the acoustic work had been on the earlier albums. Microcosmos was excellent and the first proper use of blast beats in the bands history while maintaining the atmosphere of the first few albums. Handful of Stars showed some interesting experimentation with overdrive and classic rock elements.
Eternal Turn of the Wheel was a bit of an oddball when it came out. I listened to it several times and it was forgettable. I've revisited it a few times and each time I have trouble remembering what happened during the albums run time. Even now I struggle to remember any specific riffs from the album.
What I do remember though is the excellent acoustic intro. It sets the stage for the album in a way that the early albums did. When the first proper song comes in is where things start to miss just a little bit with me. The music itself it quite well done and tries to capture the spirit of those first four albums. The slow hypnotic riffs, the sorrow filled vocals, the mid paced drumming (even if a lot of it is a blast beat). But it all is like a chaff to the wind, forgotten once it's time is passed.
When the music is playing I often find myself swept away by the compositions. Their ebb and flow take me to places I have no memory of. While that does mean that the album is largely forgettable it also means that I can relive the album for seemingly the first time every time I listen to it.
For example I'm about 5 minutes into the first real song and I forgot that there was an ambient section where the drums pull away and the keyboards take over. There is a slow riff that's playing in their place and it brings to mind some of the better moments of Autumn Aurora and the excellent melody work on that album. I completely forgot this existed and I love that I'm discovering it again.
The album is full of small moments like that, small sections here and there that remind me what Drudkh is capable of. Eternal Turn of the Wheel is not a bad album at all, it's just a forgettable one. That said I keep it around so that I can be surprised by the sections that do remind me of the glory days of the band.
Written January 29th 2024
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