DARKSIDE
At the very end of last year, the DRUKNROLL group launched this EP in order to show, prove and indicate.
What-what?
To show how to play such hard music – Melodic Death Thrash Metal with progressive influences, to prove that they do it quite successfully, and to indicate where to look and listen in order to partake in the event. You can use Yandex. For example.
And this – if you make some indications with a three-track mini-album, then in each track you can concentrate on some special aspects of your work.
And they started with brutal, and this already shows that the musicians are true to THEIR law. And they understand this “THEIR” with a certain degree of literality, striving to get away from cliches and standards. And it can be noted that they came to this over 18 years of playing music … Trash-death, aggressively progressive, that’s it – no less.
And at the same time you immediately notice that for such a genre the group was concerned with a normal sound, where the hard extreme parts do not drown each other out, but sound distinct, adequate and, most importantly, modern. Everything is legible for the accustomed ear.
And I can say that the progressive in DRUKNROLL tracks is evil and destructive in itself, as luck would have it, it gets into the thrash structure and tears it apart from the inside and grinds it down from the outside. Unheard of? Yes! Actually, we assumed that there would be some real synergy…
It’s like someone driving along a thrash highway (like Sasha), not paying attention to the road signs, and then it turns out that this path is crossed by a railroad, and there are large PROGRESSIVE steam and electric locomotives riding there, WHICH will determine the traffic schedules on these highways.
Well, this is the kind of progressive that DRUKNROLL cultivates, and quite successfully. But not everywhere, of course, everything is so scary and awful.
For example, in “Number Pi”, here the musicians drank themselves to death (crossed out) and played almost to art-rock guitar and keyboard installations. Considering the fact that this is the final track of the mini-album – normal in length: 6 and a half minutes, it seems to me that the performers decided to DEMONSTRATE their immersion in hellish avant-garde and crazy music.
Which shows both versatility, and polyrhythm, and the ability to avant-garde. They did not finish Sviridov’s “Time, Forward”, but they were somewhere a few blocks away. Well, there is rhythm, and guitars, and then such impudent mocking keys. Towards the center of the track they fell into an atmospheric ravine, where they slightly bombed the rhythm section, and then you have to run further.
“Number Pi” – turned out really progressive. Another important thing is that the composition is quite captivating (or in itself) (and even with these pastoral keys at 4:45).
Resurgam
https://www.darkside.ru/album/55580
ONMUSICSTAGE
The brutal Saratov sadists from Druknroll are back with another progressive horror story, and I’m again waiting for a Rubik’s cube and a box of cenobites from them. It just so happened that the most pleasant thing in the world for them is to turn their brains inside out, stuff thrash-death riffs with progressive perversions, and then shove it all into the listener’s mind and thus deprive him of peace, sleep and appetite, but maybe this time it will be different? And it really is a little different.
They changed a little from album to album, then returned to themselves again, tried new riffs and played solos differently, abandoned the Russian language in favor of international English, but still invariably remained psychedelic heavy metal and a claim to the “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive” of the music world. They’ve always had everything cool, technical and interesting, but not always clear and coherent, and that’s exactly what hooked their followers, but they never tire of progressing and growing, and today, on their three-track EP, they’ve climbed another step up the ladder of the scary but attractive, talking about mathematics.
Chaos lives in their veins, and on Druknroll’s albums, everything is subject to some strange and illogical patterns that instantly boil eggs hard, and shrink brains in horror from the dissonances that surround them. And there’s also a lot of non-standard arithmetic in all of this, where two times two can easily equal zero, one, or one hundred and fifty thousand, and informal logic throws the mind into the depths of dizzying paradoxes. No “tertium non datur” or other boring stuff from formalist snobs – here we have Lewis Carroll and Clive Staples Lewis dancing in a circle with their characters, and the white rabbit, Alice, the Mad Hatter and Mr. Tumnus look like real friends who have long ago abandoned any hope of regaining common sense.
What is the point, why, for what?! The material on their fresh mini is very fast and reckless, very angry and prickly, but at the same time terribly melodic, and individual fragments of “Programmed To Fail” even reminded me of the late Destruction and thrashers like Sacred Reich and Exumer. Evil sadists, not shying away from masochism, crippling themselves every now and then, as the proverb says, when there’s no fish, there’s crayfish, got carried away by mathematical paradoxes and found some secret meaning in the numerical equivalent of the number “pi”, putting it in the title of their latest release.
The thing called “Retrogradation Of Fate” is a ballad and even sensual, and when this composition sounded, I suddenly remembered how one of the journalists wrote about the late Kataklysm, “well, the guys thundered, hummed, scared everyone with their cacophony, and now this has finally become possible to listen to.” But seriously, Druknroll really become more meaningful and melodic, without losing their schizophrenia, which is especially lurking in the title number on the album. There, someone detachedly and phlegmatically counts in a decadent voice, and the instrumentalists just keep cutting up a techno-trash vinaigrette, which unexpectedly drops in on folk rock towards the end of the track.
At first glance, there aren’t too many differences from what we heard on “My Dark Desires”, but overall, the party of crazy dentists now sounds softer, more melodic and more pleasant on Druknroll, even more powerfully and convincingly referring listeners to bands like Nightingale, Sacrosanct and the clear-voiced chants of all sorts of progressives like Soilwork. No longer threshing or mad combines, but something very balanced, verified, mega-professionally produced and with a claim to winning the algebra olympiad in high school.
The most pleasant thing about “3.14” for me personally is a very healthy and impressive inoculation of old school. Of course, you will definitely not find any deliberate archaism here, but the EP is perceived as thrash and as classic thrash. More precisely, as an inflorescence that grew on this very bed of classic thrash. Already in the 80s there were groups that tried to create something like that, not similar to their colleagues in the shop, but still remain within the framework of thrash canons (remember at least Mekong Delta, Coroner, Messiah, Annihilator of the 90s or Carbonized), and they did everything just in the spirit of modern Druknroll. The Saratov band sounds signature and clear, strictly observes the aesthetics of the style, and I can only congratulate Dark East Productions on a successful acquisition and rejoice for the label and the band. They found each other, and the full-length album that is being prepared for release following the EP will certainly justify all your wildest hopes, giving your brain convolutions a sweet hell of cognitive dissonance. So far, there are only three tracks, but very soon we will have all the same, only in a more massive and impressive quantity.
8/10
Diana Tepes
https://onmusicstage.com/view/8812
ROCKCOR № 5-2024
This Saratov band has long been somewhere between all genres and metal styles in its own unique niche, and their fresh EP only reminds us all of this once again. And it also reminds us that all music is essentially mathematical, and most of the events that happen to us are also based on some digital patterns. As is clear from the title of the mini-album, it is dedicated to the notorious number pi, which haunted us back in school, but Druknroll interpret the numerical coefficient of this mystical constant in a way that is not at all like school teachers.
By and large, they are doing the same thing now that they have been doing for seven years or so (crazy, broken, progressive and extreme thrash-death-prog, tightly tied to our mental pathologies) – they rethink and remold post-thrash in their own way in the spirit of Sacred Reich, Overlill, but there is one “but”. More precisely, even two. Druknroll has a vast field of melodies now, and they are so bold and wild that they confidently take the listener away (that’s one), and the arrangements now have oceans of symphonic sounds (that’s two). It would be worth finding a third difference here, and it is that the sound and general approach have now become tougher and more thorough.
When you listen to “3.14”, you get the feeling that somewhere in the bushes behind the band there is a symphony orchestra, which enthusiastically plays along with our today’s heroes, adding classical notes and serious composer’s ambitions of symphonic geniuses and maestros of the past to their reinforced concrete mix. There is something from Voivod and Annihilator of the “Remains” era in all this, but Druknroll do everything in their own way, and their understanding of trash psychedelia is also very original and unlike anyone else. There are three tracks on the EP, all of them strong and good in their own way, but it is the title track that attracts the most attention here with its boldness and depth.
Druknroll’s smart and mathematical metal is becoming more and more listenable and passionate, and this is truly enchanting and captivating. There is less and less noise for the sake of noise and unnecessary movements without purpose, more and more perfection and sophistication, filigree hits right on target and almost jazz improvisations, and as a result, their music is perceived as prog, like Nightingale, late Sacrosanct, Coroner and Mekong Delta, but in its own unique style of broken mental phantasms, which are so clearly and exquisitely manifested in “Retrogradation Of Fate” with this moderate tempo and all-destroying pure voice.
It seems that a little more, and they will present us with Yes and Rush in prog-thrash-death, and it will be hot, cool, iron and sophisticated. I think everyone remembers that something similar was already outlined on their previous full-length (in particular, in the track “Hate”), but now they decided to increase the intensity of performance even more and aim a little higher. Well, the overall outlines of the upcoming full-length are already guessed very impressively, and it was very interesting for me to walk in the shadow of these scaffolding and architectural plans while I was listening to “3,14”. Real heavy art-rock, smart, inventive, non-trivial, unpredictable.
I would really like to continue the makings of such things from the current EP as “Retrogradation Of Fate” and “3,14” on the upcoming longplay, and I have no doubt that this will be the case. “Druk’nrolls” have entered the role of crazy Beethovens, and I think they can’t be stopped. Probably, they will have more references to Yes, Rush, Genesis and Dipple’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” in the future, and we will all get the opportunity to find out what cool art rock turned into thrash-death can sound like. And, probably, you simply can’t think of a better advertisement for a conscious lifestyle and math lessons. Even I wanted to remember cosines-sines. Great!
Alexey “Astarte Eel” Irineev
https://astartaview.ru/reczenziya-na-mini-albom-gruppy-druknroll-314/
Moscow Meltdown (Rock & Metal)
The second sin of any reviewer is comparing the band in question with other bands. Like, “it’s like crossing that band with that band”, “they copied everything from so-and-so”, “their music is just a variation on a theme”, “yet another imitator”, etc., etc. Again, the temptation is great, and I myself often resort to this technique of describing the albums I review. This makes it much easier for readers to understand what kind of music awaits them on the longplay, and the idea of it becomes more tangible. However, in today’s review of the new EP from the Russian band Druknroll, I will probably refrain from such comparisons. The most interesting thing is that it will be surprisingly simple, because Druknroll have reached such a level of musical development that they are unlike anyone else. Many listeners wonder: what will the metal of the future sound like? What will it be like in ten years? And in twenty? And what about thirty? I would say that on “3.14” Druknroll sound like a heavy band from the future. The musicians have cast aside any genre templates and are now playing at the crossroads of several musical styles at once. There is an extreme metal base (along with a booming and teeth-crushing growl), and symphonic arrangements (an interesting novelty for the band, which filled their work with new content), and thrash metal riffing, and avant-garde song structures, and, of course, progressive compositional solutions. All this is noticeable literally from the very first notes of the album – on the song “Retrogradation Of Fate”. Druknroll rush headlong and immediately plunge the listener into the abyss of chaos and lawlessness. The futuristic sound surprises and puzzles, and the vocal parts create the impression that there is not one, but two vocalists in the band. However, no, there is only one person responsible for all the singing – Alexander Tolgaev (whom you may also know from Svartstorm and a bunch of other supporter projects) – honor and praise to him. If we talk about the instrumental component, then it is truly amazing how after so many years of creativity Druknroll manages to produce new and original guitar riffs and surprise even listeners like me. Add to this a fantastic rhythm section, where you can even HEAR the BASS (a rare occurrence, believe me), and you have on your hands simply fantastic heavy music that does honor to the domestic scene. “Programmed To Fail”, I would say, is a little more typical for Druknroll, being sustained in the spirit of their past three albums, but in any case it inspires with its pressure and mind-blowing speeds. However, the title track of the EP is where Druknroll really shines – it’s pure progressive metal that truly feels like a mathematical formula embodied in notes, harmonies and rhythm (okay, it’s clear that the number Pi is not a formula, but a mathematical constant equal to the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, but I think you get the idea). Unpredictable compositional turns, rhythmic breakdowns, simply crazy vocal parts, expressive and over-the-top melodies, a truly grandiose sound – it has everything you could want from modern heavy metal for thinking listeners. It’s worth noting that “3.14” is only a prelude to the band’s new album, so even if this EP alone makes such an epochal impression, I’m genuinely interested in what awaits us on the upcoming full-length. It’s great to see how the musicians from Druknroll not only constantly find new ways to develop their music, but also purposefully raise the bar they set themselves. This is a sign of true greatness.
Nikolay Chuvikov
https://dzen.ru/a/ZnwbxGZx40e45Ufm