HOT ROCK
Classic metal alternative is alive, alive, neither classic rock nor the electronic music that is popular again this year have trampled it under their heavy heels. And even self-sufficient nu-metal has not confused those who wanted real hard stuff at least by the end of this year. Especially since Saratov’s Druknroll recently became generous with a new single ‘Zero’ and a video of the same name. The band decided to refuse big-money filming with big-video masters this time – we will bring everything we need to life ourselves. And it’s great! Flashing frames from the already legendary Metal Family cartoon series are replaced by fragments of “live” recordings adjusted to style, presenting a real audiovisual feast, not devoid of both self-irony and disappointment from what each of us is like at the moment as a unit of personality. Well, the less fuss over the video – the more surprising it is to receive such a high-quality and stylistically impeccable product from the other side. Melody, drive, as always a powerful sound and deep alternative sound – DRUKNROLL love, want and know how to do all this. And they again got three in one: provocation, self-reflection, and, of course, unrestrained vocal expression! This is a very aggressive, heavy sound even by today’s standards. Low guitar tuning, deafening sound, riffs pounding right on the head, broken rhythm and thundering bass. Without this, Druknroll is not Druknroll! Here, some psychedelic video sequence, and the endless hysteria of the band’s vocalist, at some moments turning into almost a bark, and suddenly pleasant to the ear dissonances in the melody are pleasing. In total, the single ‘Zero’ is recorded and designed for listeners in a rather interesting metal shell. For some, the outgoing year was weak, for others – skippable, but for Druknroll it turned out to be really cool!
Alena Gaivoronskaya
10/10
http://hot-rock.ru/4422-druknroll-zero-single-2021.html
SPIRIT OF ROCK
The secret of Druknroll’s success is very simple: four musicians – one voice, two guitars, keyboards, active drums – nothing more. We fell in love with them for their consistently heavy sound, crazy energy, melody that is not quite typical of traditional metal, diversity – so that there is a pleasant roar to the ear, and catchy hooks on the choruses. And also – incredible creative productivity: it’s already the end of the year, but they still managed to please fans with a new single “Zero” and a video for it. Endless riffs and rhythm, interspersed electronics and a memorable chorus. Fragments from the animated series Metal Family (known even to those who would seem to be extremely far from the world of heavy music) edited in a crazy drive with stylized inserts of shots with live musicians – an excellent way out of the situation when it is somewhat difficult to shoot completely “live” videos in the current conditions. And it is not always correct to criticize extreme performers on this point – when it comes to hardcore, it is alien to the hassle of video scripts. But more attention can be paid to the music itself – and here it is incredibly good. Played with low guitars and consisting of endless riffs and rhythms, as if originally intended for jumping on the spot during live performances, not disdaining lyrical vocals that scratch the soul, as well as interspersed with electronics, does not leave you indifferent due to the memorability of the chorus and the general mood: protest, tough, uncompromising. Overloaded sound on the verge of noise with cute cartoons immerses the listener in the atmosphere of metal bars, deafens and charges. This overloaded sound on the verge of noise with cute cartoons in the background really immerses the listener in the atmosphere of metal bars, deafens, charges with positive aggression and makes you angry in a good way. In short, when you are suffocated by injustice and self-doubt, you want to scream frantically, hate the whole world – you need to listen to “Zero”. Even if the single does not become an unofficial anthem of the informals – it will definitely be in our playlists for a long time!
Alena Gaivoronskaya
10/10
https://spiritofrock.ru/autors/druknroll-zero-recenzija-singl-i-video/
Onmusicstage
The Saratov group DRUKNROLL is a very strange and incomprehensible beast, and their new three-track EP takes the hypothetical listener even further down the paths of oddities and incomprehensibility. What kind of name is this for trash? And what kind of trash is it for such a name? And even progressive has become less, and there are more templates and straightforwardness… The material of “Zero” follows in the noisy and cacophonous footsteps of the late Sacred Reich, MX, Vendetta and other reformed veterans who have not lost their enthusiasm and courage, but have failed to preserve their elegance and grace, not caring at all, at first glance, about being original or distinctive. Well, what else could you expect from such a tough and crude piece of iron, which DRUKNROLL always were and still are – music for real men, no snot and sentimentality, fury, pressure and rough reinforced concrete shred, into which the authors for some reason decided to shove non-standard prog-tricks and cunningly twisted harmonies… I myself do not know why I am writing about them now, and what will happen in the end, but, as Mayakovsky said, if the stars are lighting up, then the album was released for a reason, you need to listen to it and write something about it.
Male music, harsh rhythms, aesthetics of sweat and iron… at least, this is the feeling left and such associations are brought by the title track, for which DRUKNROLL, who decided to sell out completely, made a cartoon video based on the cartoon series “Metal Family” beloved by young idiots. Well, yes… if it’s going to sell, it’s going to sell, and for me, who has no sympathy for such modern near-metal speculations, watching this video was sad and hard.
However, this only lasted until the vocalist Uzhas appeared on the screen, about whom I immediately wanted to say something in the categories of horror, edification and impenetrability…
And look, what a coincidence: unnoticed by me, all three main epithets for characterizing “Zero” just came up – horrible, edifying and impenetrable. The feeling from this disc remains the same as from a ton of steel flying into the face, and arguing or “reasonably” objecting here simply does not come to mind and “my hands do not reach”. “Drukenrolls” make noise, shout, growl and create a crazy din around themselves with all their might, but if you let go of the situation a little and just go with the flow for a couple of minutes and don’t argue with the nurse-vocalist while he’s getting ready to drill your leg with a faulty construction drill, you even start to like it. In fact, you don’t really have a choice: listen, understand and try to enjoy yourself. Real male pleasure, which can only be understood, tasted and appreciated by someone who has been hit by a pickup truck.
And although I have never been a fan of 90s trash or, even more so, even later modifications of the genre, DRUKNROLL with their new opus were able to show even me once again that they are not just trash and not just the 90s or the twenties of the twenty-first century, but a living musical meat grinder based on metal structures and an amorphous jelly from distant planets, which cunning retro-sci-fi writers called the word “Alien”. The creaky atmospheric creak of “Fantastic Rage” and the noisy white noise of “Black Snow” complement the title track, playing it from different sides, and “Black Snow” reminded me of the slow ballads of Hypocrisy, and “Fantastic Fury” – Hypocrisy, Voivod and Annihilator in one milk can, and even with a scattering of bolts, screws and nuts of different calibers. As soon as I lightly wiped the visor of my knight’s helmet, in which I always go out on Saturdays to write angry and critical opuses, my ears suddenly signaled to me that there was no less progressive in the new DRUKNROLL tracks, and the guitars were still twisted under broken rhythms and frequent changes of musical thought, as before.
You can hate them for “Metal Family” and point-blank fail to see the persistent attempts of the band to transform the old bones of old school from the inside, you may not even understand what humor, trolling and flame are, it will only benefit them. In general, there are only two such bands on our scene: DRUKNROLL and Grenouer, and both raise more questions than answers. It is unclear what genre to classify them as, what shelf to put them on, what to expect from them, what to take them with and what side effects they can cause, but if you listen to them once or twice, you gradually begin to get drawn in. Grenouer will be lighter and more artistic, DRUKNROLL will be harsher and more pocacophonous, but all this is the same whale, only from a different helicopter. Between two chairs, with a swing and without looking back at anyone or anything. DRUKNROLL can flirt with TikTok regulars and appeal to their favorite memes, they can film the most controversial and stupid cartoon series of our time in their video, but they still remain themselves. It is difficult to say whether this will harm them or not, and what results it will lead to in the near and distant future, but in any real experiment there is always and certainly an element of surprise, otherwise it would not be an experiment. And, no, modern kids simply physically will not be able to understand this, even if they really want to – after all, the avant-garde in the new tracks of the Saratov band, although it has shrunk, does not think of migrating anywhere, but still clings to the roots of riffs, fills and voices, every now and then raising its head from the trench even in the most ballad and lyrical of the entire EP “Black Snow”. We are approaching the home stretch, and to finish my review, I am once again preparing a thoughtful summary and a global conclusion. Once upon a time, Slayer and Cannibal Corpse dealt weighty slaps to public taste, and now, when neither cannibals nor maniacal fishermen can surprise anyone, the Saratov band DRUKNROLL is trying to take over the baton in this sprint race from the greats. They are still a long way from “Locksmith” and “Cannibal Corps”, but if you like noisy post-trash and its many-sided variations, if you are not embarrassed by the multiplication table and generally everything strange and incomprehensible in this world, then you may even like it here. However, it seems to me, the Druknrolls themselves, who don’t give a damn about your likes and dislikes, that they are like the swan, the crayfish and the pike from the famous fable by our wonderful Ivan Andreevich Krylov: they retreat, they pull into the water, they rush into the clouds, and all this at the same time and as part of the same “Quartet”. It would be worth giving this mini-album a zero, as its title requires, but just in case I will draw more familiar and traditional ones for me
7/10
Diana Tepes
http://onmusicstage.com/view/8555
ASTARTA
“My love is too scary a beast to unleash on you,” sang some of our fairly well-known folk musicians in certain circles, and now we can all see how such a scary beast looks in real life using the example of the Saratov group Druknroll. These guys are scary, gentle, strange, chameleon-like, unlike themselves and progressive at the same time, and here is their latest EP, which confirms all these characteristics at once and once again digs them another half meter into the black earth to make them more confident, solid and beyond doubt.
It is still impossible to clearly define what the Saratov band is playing, but it is still noisy, sophisticated and eclectic. Probably, if Schnittke were our contemporary and loved Hypocrisy, he would compose something similar, and Druknroll are now technical, original, unlike anyone else and at the same time similar to many of your favorite bands, if, of course, you like thrash, death, groove, progressive and math metal. And, by the way, from the outside it all looks as if postgraduate students of the physics and mathematics department listened to avant-garde classics and went to the people to make complex formulas of higher mathematics public.
And it works. They will remind you of mind games, John Nash, paradoxes of consciousness, conspiracy theories and cruel jokes of paranoid psychosis, and all this will be accompanied by harsh riffs, menacing vocals and the rumble of crazy instrumental cannonades. However, compared to their previous creation, Druknroll’s current release looks a little calmer, more melodic and moderate, and their three new tracks easily and without unnecessary movements come together into a single whole, but all this is a very deceptive ease and seeming peacefulness. Behind the warm breeze and azure waves of their riffing, evil jaws of sharks can be guessed, and this is serious. Western reviewers even heard gothic and symphonic sounds in the soundtracks of “Zero”, but I will say it more simply: “Zero” is like Malevich’s “Black Square” and Destruction’s “Metal Discharge” – the simplest, most elementary and brilliant in its simplicity release of Druknroll, which, nevertheless, has a lot of colors, shades and surprises. Lots of technique and melodies, the amazing but quite organic balladry of “Black Snow”, references to the modern metal of the late In Flames and a strong taste of avant-garde make this EP and this group as a whole brighter and more original, and their seething hodgepodge now seems truly natural and even graceful.
The only thing that turned out to be a little beyond my comprehension in this whole story is the video for the title track, in which the heroes of the cartoon epic Metal Family appear before our eyes. It looks as if the Saratov guys decided to foist their radioactive thrash-n-death even on hooligan teenagers on skateboards, and such a radical expansion of the audience of potential listeners looks a little strange. Why do teenagers in baseball caps worn backwards need Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and the symphonic-atonal fantasies of the Saratov guys from Druknroll? Will they be able to understand and digest all this, and will they turn on “Zero” after watching “Metal Family”?
A lot of questions, not so many answers, but at the same time, another thing is obvious: “Zero” is a lot of noise from a lot of things, but it all sounds quite monolithic, straightforward and listenable. There is something apocalyptic in such disturbing pounding on the verge of dissonances and Schnittke, and personally it seems to me that all these conceptual things are very poorly combined with cartoons, comics and teenage sessions, but the guys from Druknroll once again broke all the templates and showed that nothing is impossible for a creative person. Their organized chaos and controlled madness are bursting into the masses, and seem more and more real and attractive.
Alexey “Astarte Eel” Irineev
http://astartaview.ru/recenziya-na-mini-albom-gruppy-druknroll-zero/
LEGACY#137-2022
Wääänäää! Die Russen sind daaa! Aus dem Hause Metal Scrap landet die neue EP dieses in Saratov direkt an der Wolga basierten, sich seit 2007 auf symphonisch-tödlicher Mission befindlichen Sextetts auf dem Rezensiertisch. Die drei auf dem Tonträger befindlichen Songs ,Black Snow’, ,Zero’ und ,Fantastic Rage’ bringen es dabei zwar nur auf eine Gesamtspielzeit von 13 Minuten, diese jedoch sollten ausreichen, um einige Nervenkostüme zu zerfetzen. Speziell letztgenannter Song stellt eine wüste Melange von 90er-Goth-Metal, ungesundem Menschenverstand, Groove-Attacken und garstigem Gegrowle dar, garniert dies mit einem bunten Strauß Industrial und einem netten Detune-Effekt auf den Gitarren. Man stelle sich eine gutklassige Mischung aus Crematory zu „Awake“-Zeiten mit einer Portion „Psalm 69“-Ministry und slawischer Angepisstheit vor, dann kommt man der Sache schon recht nah. Das namensgebende ,Zero’ kommt konventioneller daher, dreht den Thrash-Faktor eine Ecke höher und dürfte das Herz jedes Modern-Metal-Freundes höherschlagen lassen. Auf dem vergleichsweise ruhigen ,Black Snow’ kommen vor allem symphonische Elemente in Form von Streicherund Pianosamples zum Einsatz, die im Kontrast zu den ebenfalls vorhandenen Shredgitarren-Soli eine unangenehme, dissonante Atmosphäre erschaffen. Zweifelsohne sind hier überdurchschnittlich fähige Musiker und Songwriter am Werk, jedoch beschleicht den Hörer beim Konsum der EP ein leichtes Gefühl, dass hier einiges aus dem Kontext gerissen ist, sodass ein Eintauchen in den Kosmos von DRUKNROLL merkliche Anstrengung erfordert.
10 Punkte
RH
https://label.metalscraprecords.com/playlist/zero/