Druids – Shadow Work
Pelagic Records – 2022
Metal, Doom, Prog, Sludge
Rated: *****
We’ve been listening to it for months, but we still feel like we are very late to the party. Cause Shadow Work has suddenly and totally been really clicking over here. So, we donned out our hooded cloaks, started marching in circles around a giant stone, and humming some doom magic to invoke the maelstrom sounds of Druids! For it was at the Krach Am Bach festival that a certain melody suddenly reminded us of something. And before we knew what was happening, we were transported deep into the Druids universe and chanting out loud: “I tried to heal myself, From what I use to be, I tried to free myself, From who I've always been.” Sure, the other festival goers, took a second glance, some might even have known what song I was shouting, others probably wondered why I was singing a totally different song than the one performed on stage. Either way, suddenly that fourth album track Hide had me snared and trapped and I felt wonderful. But don’t get me wrong, the lead-up, the build up towards that fourth track is already brilliantly done. Opening it all with the elemental, fleeting, yet totally inhabiting Aether, awaking all the inner shadows within you. And then immediately, with those awesome vocals on second track Path To R. A track that slowly builds, progresses, and uses all sorts of atmospheric elements to eventually come to that whirling frenzy of noise, shouts, and howls. Slow grooving Ide’s Koan, has a guitar cruising on top of that massive bassline, before we come to a finale worth of apocalyptic pyrotechnics. Crushing you slowly but decidedly with a roof of noise, bringing it all in, bringing it all down. Would I have gone for the fade out? Or perhaps explode it all in one final break? Not sure, either way, the air provided with those drums on the following masterpiece Hide, the meandering bass underneath, a guitar slowly revving up in the back and the vocals leading up to that perfect chorus. So much tension blown straight out the window, so much release, yet still retaining some mystic elements and a way forward. It seems that Druids have found that magical element needed to make the following four tracks of Shadow Work as golden as the four starting points. Progressive doom metal alchemy: it’s what the Druids do…
(Written by JK)
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