Drowning the Light: To the End of Time (2007)

Today, I am back with another Drowning the Light album review.  Just like the subject of yesterday's post, this album was released in 2007.  It is actually the band's fourth full-length and was released just before yesterday's album.  But again, there are some profound differences between this album and the one from yesterday that makes it stand out.

This album may just be the most darkly romantic-sounding raw black metal album I have ever heard.  Now I do not want to make it sound like this makes it a happy album, very fucking far from it in fact.  It is an ugly kind of romance.  Dark, filthy and disgusting.  There are moments of light, of hope where Drowning the Light sounds like they are channeling The Cure through their much more emphatic Burzum influence, but then the darkness overtakes them, leaving with a shamble of broken hope.

The lyrics certainly follow along with this lack of hope.  Featuring song titles like "The Obscene Rite of Possession" and "Severing All Ties to this Mortal World", it is clear the songwriter is in a pretty dark place.  And of course the vocals themselves greatly contrast with the music, taking on a horrifically ugly rasp that is sheer madness compared with the relative levity of some of the music.

This is one of the more memorable Drowning the Light albums, taking on a tone that is unusual for the genre.  And for that, it is also one of the better ones, one I would recommend for someone interested in checking out the band.

Drowning the Light: Of Celtic Blood & Satanic Pride (2007)

I have covered Drowning the Light a few times on this blog, so I am not going to get too much into their history here.  I first heard about the band from watching Youtube videos of people talking about their music collections and one such Youtuber was a huge fan of the band.  I checked it out and became a big fan myself.  Drowning the Light is truly one of the better Burzum-influenced, raw black metal bands out there.

This release is the fifth full-length Drowning the Light album and came during a particularly prolific year for main-man Azgorh, as four of those full-lengths came out that same year.  He also released several demos and splits.  With that kind of output, it would be understandable, if not excuseable, for the quality of the album to be a little low.  That is not the case here however. 

This is not one of the absolute best Drowning the Light releases I have heard, but it is quite good nonetheless.  It is a bit more emotional with some darker melodies running through it and some much more somber moments.  It is not as furiously angry as some of the other works and can be quite spell-binding at times.  It is also one of the shorter full-length Drowning the Light albums, meaning that it does not overstay its welcome, which is a bit of a problem for some other groups in the genre. 

The production is not great on the album, with the drums a little too high in the mix.  This is a fairly normal thing for this type of black metal though so it is certainly not unexpected.  Still, I wonder what it would sound like a little cleaner.

This is yet another great release from Drowning the Light.  It is a bit more on the somber end of things, but that helps it stand out somewhat from the massive number of other releases from the band.  This is unlikely to be the first album I go to when I want to listen to them, but it won't be the last one either.