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Drouth – The Teeth of Time Review

By Dear Hollow

There are bands that check all the boxes from a quick gander at the promo. Yeah, sure it’s black metal, but the name Drouth is just fun to say.1 The title The Teeth of Time is just tantalizingly terrific. That cover is appropriately terrifying and unique. Don’t expect me to listen to the advance track – I’m on it, hoss. The problem is that such behavior led me to an average score of 2.3 in 2022, when I dedicated myself entirely to the blackened arts. What can I say? The dark blacky whacky looks cool as hell so much of the time. That being said, will Drouth be a bounty of rewards beneath its shimmer or is it just a whitewashed tomb?

Drouth is a black metal band from Portland, formed in 2014. Born from the ashes of Contempt and featuring caliber from acts like Vermin Womb, Ursa, Cormorant, and Black Queen, they have released a plethora of blackened breeds, impressing with their range but lacking identity: debut Knives, Labyrinths, Mirrors fully immersed itself into the mellow meloblack pond while follow-up Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy laid an icy finger upon death-doom’s more weighty moods. In this way, while firmly entrenched in the former, Drouth engages in a more feral and unhinged approach reminiscent of other American black metal acts like Mo’ynoq or Anicon, shredding tremolo and layered melodic overlays colliding in an overwhelming and tastefully concocted experience.

Drouth manages to strike a fine balance: layers of melody and a pristine production. The Teeth of Time’s foundation of rabid tremolo, bouncing around with an energy and fire, is complemented by an unhinged percussion performance that utterly rips into the next dimension. The sound drips with iciness that recalls Immortal but without the bogged-down drama. The diminished chord progression that everyone and his kvlt dog uses appears only sporadically (“Through a Glass, Darkly,” “Exult, Ye Flagellant”), replaced by a yearning melody that feels desperate and vicious in equal measure. Muscular riffage bolsters this approach with a death metal-inspired weight that kicks things into high gear while emerging from the fray in moments of clarity (“False Grail,” “Through a Glass…”), while melodies are unique in their sounding both haunting and heart-wrenching (“Hurl Your Thunderbolt Even Unto Death,” title track, “Through a Glass…”). The production and mixing are clear and clean, offering a rawness drenched in reverb without losing the individual elements – the drum production in particular is organic and relentless in equal measure.

While the majority of the album focuses on unhinged melodic second-wave shenanigans, there are moments of experimentation that are scattered into the latter half. Closer “Exult, Ye Flagellants” is perhaps the best example. While generally aligning with the American black metal template, the doom flavors of Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy appear most prominently in a dreary and mysterious dirge, only hinted at in earlier tracks (“False Grail”). The passage of flaying dissonance halfway through (vaguely hinted at in “Through a Glass…”), a layered haunted plucking that recalls microtonal acts like Victory Over the Sun, is a tad out of place but nonetheless impressive. Guest vocals provided by Ails and former Ludicra alum Laurie Sue Shanaman and Christy Cather in the title track, “Hurl Your Thunderbolt…,” and “False Grail” inject a dose of fiery energy, while Dead to a Dying World and Isenordal violist Eva Aldridge adds a somber dimension to “False Grail” and “Through a Glass, Darkly.”

One thing that Drouth does very well is make black metal sound pretty decent – good, even. Even though it takes repeated spins to unearth its treasures beneath the feral attack of layered melodies and muscular riffs, and the bass sometimes gets lost in the buzz of second-wave, The Teeth of Time is solid as fuck. Offering five tracks in a reasonable forty-one minutes, you have time to ponder but plenty of time to be thrashed about. While Drouth has experimented in prior releases, I hope the sound on The Teeth of Time is here to stay. Drouth offers bounty aplenty beneath its appealing exterior: get bitten or bite me.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Eternal Warfare Records
Websites: drouth.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/drouthpdx
Releases Worldwide: May 16th, 2025

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Tómarúm – Beyond Obsidian Euphoria

By Kenstrosity

Over the past three years, I’ve come to appreciate Tómarúm’s surprising, mature debut Ash in Realms of Stone Icons at a deeper level than I had hoped to reach in the mere two weeks provided at the time. While I stand by my overall score—and by my critiques—my relationship with that record grew more meaningful and rewarding with time. Tómarúm’s spiritually charged, introspective point of view speaks volumes of suffering and strife, while the complexity of their musical compositions reflects in uncompromising clarity the fluid order that governs a turbulent chaos of the soul and of the heart. With this fresh in mind, I approach follow-up Beyond Obsidian Euphoria with great curiosity and equal anticipation.

Occupying a niche of progressive metal most commonly associated with acts like Ne Obliviscaris, but also connected to newer groups such as Amiensus, An Abstract Illusion, and Dawn of Ouroboros, Atlanta quintet Tómarúm boast an especially fluid and emotive sound. Progressive structures and ever-shifting phrases abound, yet never intrude, obstruct, or interrupt. Technical prowess reminiscent of Fallujah and Lunar Chamber creates additional dynamics most noticeably felt in the bass guitar, lead guitar, and drum performances. And, to my great delight, a new twist of machine-gun burst riffing pulled from Warforged‘s I: Voice playbook grants a palpable, terrifying presence. Beyond Obsidian Euphoria takes all of these elements, intrinsic to Tómarúm’s identity, and implements them with the same finesse and refinement of the last record, but with an altogether more hopeful tone. While still dealing with subjects of profound anguish and emotional turmoil, Beyond explores further the catharsis borne of dedicated, dogged persistence against those internal demons which would otherwise have your singular light extinguished from this mortal coil.

Nothing better exemplifies this shift in tone than the one-two punch of standout duo “Shallow Ecstasy” and “Shed This Erroneous Skin.” Epic sweeps of ominous shadow collide with shimmers of brilliance as menacing pummels advance their campaign against soaring leads and righteous solos. Those blackened rasps that voiced past work join the fray again as crooning cleans provide motivating counterpoint to fuel the flame of continuing life. A vivid chiaroscuro of composition personifies every moment across this 16-minute span, but the surrounding environs offer just as many dynamic moments of beauty and beastliness. The remarkably short and savage “Blood Mirage” deals massive damage to the cranium as it executes a brutal assault of riffs and tech-y oscillations, while “Halcyon Memory: Dreamscapes Across the Blue” evokes an Hail Spirit Noir-esque airiness that belies its double-bass propulsion and quasi-bluesy harmonized solos. The gamut of sounds, styles and textures malleate as soft putty in Tómarúm’s talented fingers, which allows their unfaltering focus on story and character to shine ever brighter on Beyond’s second immense suite of epics, “Silver, Ashen Tears” and “The Final Pursuit of Light.” Any impression of bloat falls to the wayside in the face of such nuanced and well-realized musical design, as melody, pace, substance, and technicality find a kaleidoscopic harmony striking in its multifaceted vibrancy.

At just under 70 minutes, Beyond Obsidian Euphoria daunts any audience with a monumental investment. The dividends, however, more than make up for the sacrifice. That is, if the listener is willing and ready to dig deep and find those moments most intimate and vulnerable. That delicate pluck of the string in a phrase flanked by vicious scrapes; the contrabass frequency that stimulates the spine as starry tremolos dot the sky; the desperate howl of pain and of shattered spirit that preludes an epiphany of truth and of healing; the miraculous congregation of hook and sophistication moving in tandem towards a shared apex of sound and story; all find a place in this wonderful piece, and each piece has its place. Unlike my experience with Ash in Realms, my experience with Beyond is one of complete and utter immersion. There is hardly a moment I would change, barely a segment I would cut—save for the fluffy interlude “Introspection III,” appearing too early on to leave a lasting mark by the close.

Occasionally, I find myself unable to dedicate the time necessary to engage with Tómarúm’s latest opus. I expect that others will experience the same unfortunate circumstance. While that certainly poses a question to the value statement of an album this long, specifically because its individual chapters can’t be separated without compromising the integrity of the whole, Beyond Obsidian Euphoria feels like a rare record that needs every second it consumes. The passion and personality Tómarúm exude in this work demands the price of time to bloom. If you give it the space to do so, what awaits can only be described as euphoric.

Rating: Excellent!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records
Websites: tomarum.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/TomarumBM/
Releases Worldwide: April 4th, 2025

#2025 #45 #AmericanMetal #Amiensus #AnAbstractIllusion #Apr25 #BeyondObsidianEuphoria #BlackMetal #Cormorant #DawnOfOuroboros #DeathMetal #Fallujah #HailSpiritNoir #LunarChamber #MelodicBlackMetal #MelodicDeathMetal #NeObliviscaris #ProgressiveBlackMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProstheticRecords #Review #Reviews #TechnicalDeathMetal #Tómarúm #Warforged