Label: Season of Mist: Underground Activists
Release date: March 21st, 2025
In the beginning, there was light, a soft and golden haze that filtered through the mist-laden trees of an ancient forest. It was a time of balance, where warmth held dominion over the earth, and the voices of nature whispered in harmony. But with light, there is always shadow. It lurks at the edges, creeping forward with the slow, inevitable certainty of twilight.
Drudkh, the renowned Ukrainian duo, masterfully brings the eternal interplay of light and shadow to life in “Shadow Play”, a sonic tapestry woven from both the luminous and the abyssal. Each track unfolds like a chapter in a mythic saga of decay, transformation, and rebirth. Far from simply presenting black metal in its rawest form, the album transcends the genre, elevating it to something both elemental and legendary. It reverberates like an echo of forgotten landscapes, a haunting reflection of the relentless march of time.
From the opening moments of “Scattering the Ashes”, light struggles against encroaching darkness. The guitar melodies are ethereal yet mournful, like the last glimmers of a setting sun casting long shadows upon the land. Percussion crashes like distant thunder, a harbinger of the storm to come. It is not destruction but transformation. The ashes of what was are scattered to make way for what will be.
Then, “April” arrives, a moment of awakening and violent beauty. It is the eruption of spring’s fire, a force that upends the fragile equilibrium between light and dark. The track moves with an almost orchestral grandeur, melodies surging forth like rivers freed from winter’s grip. The presence of keyboards and expansive guitars paint a soundscape both triumphant and sorrowful, as if celebrating the world’s renewal while mourning what must fade.
With “The Exile”, the cycle turns. Here, the listener is cast adrift in an odyssey of longing, where solitude is not merely an absence but a presence in itself. The guitars weave a melody that seems suspended between hope and despair, between the light of remembered days and the dark road stretching endlessly ahead. The song unfolds like an ancient lament, a hymn for those who wander yet never arrive.
“Fallen Blossom” is where the light falters. There is a gentleness to its sorrow, an almost reverent hush that falls over the composition. This is the hush of autumn, the moment when nature, in its wisdom, does not fight decay but embraces it. The song’s delicate, melancholic passages evoke images of leaves drifting on the wind, their descent as inevitable as the setting of the sun.
Then comes “The Eve”, a hymn to the threshold between day and night. The lyrics speak of a world holding its breath, of golden hues dissolving into the deep indigo of the encroaching night. Autumn is personified as a sorrowful, barefoot wanderer, moving through the land with quiet reverence. It is the final embrace of the light before darkness claims dominion, a moment both fleeting and eternal.
Finally, “The Thirst” arrives. It is the longest and most unrelenting piece of the album. It is the final descent, the inescapable pull of the abyss. Yet, within its fury, there remains something human, something that lingers beyond the aggression. The track closes with a sense of finality, not as an end, but as a transition. The thirst is unquenchable, for darkness will always seek light, just as light can never fully banish shadow.
Drudkh has long mastered the art of weaving nostalgia, nature, and history into their music, and “Shadow Play” is a testament to this craft. It is an album that exists between worlds, between seasons, between moments of clarity and the depths of obscurity. It does not merely tell a story. It embodies one.
In the end, the light may wane, but it never truly vanishes. It lingers, in embers, in memory, in the echo of a melody carried by the wind. And so, the dance of shadow and light continues, as it always has, and always will.
