ASTARTA
Saratov brutalists never tire of tormenting their strings and sound-reproducing equipment even in summer, when all the lazy progressive-regressive humanity has long been basking in hammocks and sun loungers somewhere in the Maldives. Like stern socialists who never look for easy ways, the guys from DRUKNROLL, led by their permanent founder and mastermind meister Druknroll, do not want to philosophize cunningly, but lean toward the simplest, most obvious and literal interpretation of the ancient proverb about evil not sleeping: they do not sleep, do not rest, do not light stinking Chinese chopsticks and do not poke cutlery into sushi/rolls and other sushi wok, but angrily and vigilantly weave their gloomy metal web in order to drag in a couple more adepts.
What, you are still here and haven’t disappeared on vacation to Cyprus or your grandma’s beloved Vasyuki? In that case, you simply have no choice, and right now you will have to get acquainted in detail with the latest three-track release of the great and terrible symphonic combinators, with which they plan to prepare the ground for their next, already sixth full-length album, and at the same time deprive you of peace and sleep. By the way, today we will talk about an interesting and rather piquant topic – as you already understood from the title of the EP, today we will drink to love, and this love will not be from the series of resort-obscene low-grade novels, but the most doomed and tearing your insides to pieces doomed love, which will tickle your nerves with violins and riffs for fifteen whole minutes. Even Igor Nikolaev himself, who tried hard to influence the concept of the current mini-album and bombarded the guys with requests and threats to add “lyrics and soul” to the EP, could not do anything and influence the course of this harsh metal armored train: DRUKNROLL are not going to change themselves and continue to cut desperate, technically-rolling and saturated with thick symphonic thrash/death. Only a few seconds of disturbing strumming of the opening track “I Multiply The Pain” are heard, and then the instrumentalists habitually break loose to hit the iron cacophony so characteristic of them, and only in the chorus they allow the vocalist to rest a little and sing with a clear voice. The gray King Diamond horror background is felt in the manner of playing of the current DRUKNROLL, and it suits them. Unexpected transitions and even more unexpected instrumental inserts cross this piece lengthwise and crosswise, braiding it like barbed wire and making the vinaigrette performed by the musicians more delicious, varied and rich, and the verified monstrous-virtuosic solo evokes the unprecedented passions that flared up at the dawn of the formation of thrash metal between Mustaine, King, Friedman and Waters. The beginning of the title piece sounds very dramatic and majestic, and in the serious shootout between the guitar and the rhythm section, something Annihilator-like is actually guessed and recognized: evil, abrupt and merciless. There are even more symphonic sounds in the second piece, and at times this piece seriously resembles a rehearsal of some avant-garde orchestra. By the way, the musicians made an interesting video for the title track and tried to illustrate the vanilla-love theme in their own way. The main find of the video is that the entire plot is repeated from beginning to end twice: in its usual order the first time, and on fast forward the second time, to once again remind what was in the video in case someone from the viewers joined the viewing in the middle and did not see the calf tenderness present at the beginning of the video, missing the whole essence. Frankly, at some point during the viewing I already started to think that the expected bloody-maniacal denouement would not happen (the development and stringing together of the same type of candy-bouquet-bed interactions took too long, was very detailed and gradual), but no – those who thought in the same vein as me, please, will be disappointed: the main character is a maniac, he does have a knife in his stash, and in the final frame he does swing it. Curtain.
Listen to how cheerfully the final EP “Destruction Inside” plays with distorted wheezes and drum rolls in the spirit of classic Destruction, and now buckle up tighter, because it’s going to shake. This thing is so feverish with various changes of rhythm and tempo that it begins to seem as if the authors decided to shake us out of the booth and make this our ride on the roller coaster of their riffs and fills the last one. The rhythm section sometimes quiets down, leaving the guitar alone with its tritones and fifths, sometimes returns en masse to its alma mater, wanting to make up for lost time, and the vocalist rushes from one extreme to another, changing his menacing growl to a poisonous wheeze and clear-voiced proclamations in order to convey, reach out, break through the soundproofing prudently installed by the neighbors and say his weighty “yes” to atonal dissonances, Scriabin, early Mekong Delta and Nietzsche.
A whole bunch of bands wanted to play such heavy and twisty techno-trash in the late 80s, but few of them managed to do anything even slightly intelligible due to the considerable technical skills and remarkable mental fortitude required for this activity, but our Saratov band decided to reach the finish line at once along the path at the beginning of which stood Coroner, Voivod and Sacrosanct in order to amaze the world with their melodic-orchestral cacophony and forever establish a huge monument to themselves for centuries. The guys’ material is certainly for an amateur, but people who know a lot about large-scale and well-made heavy prog-trash will certainly appreciate and bless the flight of their creative thought. It’s a bit strange that the label recommends “Doomed Love” to fans of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and Children Of Bodom – it would be much more correct to invite to this party those who revere Death, Nocturnus, Hollenthon and Alchemist.
4/5
Alexey “Astarte Eel” Irineev
http://astartaview.ru/druknroll-doomed-love/
Журнал БУНКЕР
Do you remember how cool it was in the mid-2000s? Animal Jazz or Jane Air were playing through the wheezing speaker of your phone, simple, naive, but heart-stirring music videos were being shown on TV, and somewhere in distant Saratov, a new alternative project was being born – Druknroll.
The band successfully survived these times, constantly delighting fans with new releases, changing, but remaining true to themselves. In 2019, their EP “Doomed Love” was released – a strong, emotional work, with unusual melody for metal, rich vocals of the band’s permanent lead singer and a special, signature sound that Druknroll carried through the years. Undoubtedly, this song immediately required an appropriate visual design.
The video for the song “Doomed Love” takes the viewer back to those nostalgic times – an informal couple strolling around the city, telling each other all sorts of nonsense, warming up with delicious drinks (necessarily with a lot of whipped cream and colorful sprinkles!) – and all this cloying pastoral, suddenly, to the sounds of modern metal, oppressive, promising the worst development of events in the near future, that is, by the end of the video. It even becomes scary for the unlucky, unsuspecting lovers – what trap is fate preparing for them, what is the band’s vocalist warning them about? The whole insidious plan will be revealed only in the last seconds of the video, forcing you to replay the entire course of events in your head (and on the screen) over and over again, trying to find hints of the insidious plan of the participants in this story. Well, the more unexpected will be the outcome that awaits both the heroes of the video and the viewer. Let’s also highlight interesting visual moves – the picture, and the plot too, the video resembles the once cult Bullet for My Valentine with their “Tears Don’t Fall”, and the games with rewinding time look like part of the plot and even like a full-fledged participant in all the events that take place. The bed-romantic scenes are also pleasant – light, within the bounds of decency, without unnecessary revelations, but for some reason you want to believe in them.
Probably because the video itself is simple – you don’t need to look for twenty meanings in what is happening, but this is what makes it valuable: all its ins and outs are revealed, in fact, by the song – at first contrasting with what is happening in the video, and after the first viewing – logical and perfectly complementing it.
The video will appeal to all those who love metal – modern, but the videos are still old school. Fortunately, the group adheres to one style in their video works, and their mini-films definitely deserve the attention of everyone who has long been looking for a piece of the distant 2007 in modern music.
Alena Gaivoronskaya
https://bunkermagazine.ru/index.php?id=1354