Review Summary: Let our world flood
The stoics of ancient Greece engaged in a meditative practice known as Memento Mori (you too will die). Contrast is how we value and devalue our subjective experiences. Contrasting life's menial tasks with death's eternal solitude is a great way to appreciate each waking hour. It is also an excellent tool for combating anxiety because it helps you focus on the things you can control rather than those you cannot. However, another practice is even more potent, perhaps even unsettling. Meditating on the scope of time. Realizing that the day is nothing but a droplet in the ocean of time. Perspective laid bare by contrast. The horrors of reality are minimized while the beauty of life is amplified. Yet, music and art act as stills of the ephemeral tragedies that whisk by us, hijacked by father time. These works force us to look into the void. They remind us that the void is looking back at us. Suffering is stitched into the fabric of our reality, but the momentary lapse of grief is what propels beauty to the loftiest of heights, giving humanity something to strive for.
This delicate balance of pain and pleasure, beauty and horror, is expertly implemented in Drudkh's 12th effort, All Belong to the Night. The production is atmospheric, yet the separation of instruments is fleshed out just enough to hone in on the intricate bass passages and drum fills. Yes, the bass is actually audible in an atmospheric black metal record, and you can hear it in all its glory on the third track November. Drudkh has always captured the melancholic dread the genre is known for exceptionally well, but the weight of this album is distinguishable from their previous efforts. There is something more hidden beneath the melancholy that we haven't heard from Drudkh since Blood In Our Wells – hatred. All Belong to the Night is a product of its time, intent on remaining a fixture in your mind. The contrast isn't an ebb and flow between beauty and chaos but from despair and rage. This war may be a droplet in the ocean of time, but it may be the drop that drowns the world.
