Line #43 Music/Drudkh


1	A BlackMetal band from Kharkiv, UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}, Drudkh have established themselves as one of that country's most famed exports in the genre. Naming themselves after the Sanskrit word for "wood" or "tree", the band have amassed a substantial, critically acclaimed discography since their first album in 2003, despite the band members' past flirtations with authoritarian ideologies (which they have since disowned and now seem to regard as an OldShame).
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3	At some point, Season of Mist set up a [[https://drudkh.bandcamp.com/ Bandcamp site]] where you can stream or purchase their music. Most information about them is only available by WordOfSaintPaul, as they have never given interviews and don't interact with the press; the closest thing we've ever gotten to an official statement from them was an announcement they made upon signing to the label disclaiming all connections to radical politics.
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5	Vlad and Roman Saenko also went on to form the Dark {{Ambient}} band Music/DarkAges.
6	----
7	!!Members
8	* Krechet - Bass, Keyboards
9	* Roman Saenko - Guitars, Bass
10	* Thurios - Vocals, Keyboards
11	* Vlad - Drums, Keyboards
12
13	!!Discography
14	* 2003 - ''Forgotten Legends''
15	* 2004 - ''Autumn Aurora''
16	* 2005 - ''Лебединий шлях (The Swan Road)''
17	* 2006 - ''Кров у наших криницях (Blood in Our Wells)''
18	* 2006 - ''Пісні скорботи і самітності (Songs of Grief and Solitude)''
19	* 2007 - ''Anti-Urban'' (EP)
20	* 2007 - ''Відчуженість (Estrangement)''
21	* 2009 - ''Microcosmos''
22	* 2010 - ''Пригорща зірок (Handful of Stars)''
23	* 2010 - ''Slavonic Chronicles'' (EP)
24	* 2012 - ''Вічний оберт колеса (Eternal Turn of the Wheel)''
25	* 2014 - ''Thousands of Moons Ago / The Gates'' (split with Winterfylleth)
26	* 2014 - ''Eastern Frontier in Flames'' (compilation of ''Anti-Urban'', ''Slavonic Chronicles'', and the band's side of ''Thousands of Moons Ago'')
27	* 2015 - ''Борозна обірвалася (A Furrow Cut Short)''
28	* 2016 - ''Той, хто говорить з імлою (One Who Talks with the Fog) / Pyre Era, Black!'' (Split with Hades Almighty)
29	* 2016 - ''Зраджені сонцем (Betrayed by the Sun) / Hägringar (Mirages) (split with Grift)''
30	* 2017 - ''Десь блукає журба (Somewhere Sadness Wanders) / Schnee (IV) (Snow (IV))'' (split with Paysage d'Hiver)
31	* 2018 - ''Їм часто сниться капіж (They Often See Dreams About the Spring)''
32	* 2019 - ''Кілька рядків архаїчною українською (A Few Lines in Archaic Ukrainian)'' (compilation of the band's contributions to their 2016 and 2017 splits)
33	* 2022 - ''Всі належать ночі (All Belong to the Night)''
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35	Drudkh also contributed two tracks to the multi-artist compilation ''One and All, Together, for Home'' (2014), which Saenko curated himself.
36
37	!!Tropes
38	* AlbumIntroTrack: One on nearly every album. In fact, their only full-lengths that ''don't'' have one (as of February 2019, at least) are ''Forgotten Legends'', ''Estrangement'', ''A Furrow Cut Short'', and ''They Often See Dreams About the Spring''. A few albums also have Album Outro Tracks.
39	* BilingualBonus: Most of their lyrics are in their native Ukrainian. Song and album titles are usually given in both Ukrainian and English. ''Forgotten Legends'' and ''Autumn Aurora'' originally had song titles only in English, but a recent digital release added alternate Ukrainian titles, which aren't always direct translations of the English titles. (The album titles are still only listed in English; ''Forgotten Legends'' would apparently be ''Забуті легенди'' in Ukrainian, while ''Autumn Aurora'' would be ''Осінь аврора''.) ''Anti-Urban'' still has song titles only in English, and the titles of the band's covers remain unchanged from the originals (thus far, two each have been Polish and Czech, with one in Latin). Meanwhile, there are no official English song titles for the songs on ''They Often See Dreams About the Spring'', and in fact the album's liner notes are also written almost entirely in untranslated Ukrainian, down to "Side A" and "Side B" on the record labels. (The only exceptions are "33 rpm" and the names of the music studio, the visual artist, the record label, and the band - though it should be noted that the name of the studio, "Viter", is also Ukrainian for "wind". And of course, the band's name is also a foreign word, though Sanskrit rather than Ukrainian.)
40	* BadassBookworm: Roman Saenko, helps that he's a ''history teacher''.
41	* BlackMetal: Probably the genre's most famous act from Ukraine at this point.
42	* {{Bookends}}: Several albums display this. For example, as discussed below under RecurringRiff, ''Autumn Aurora'' opens and closes with the same melody. This also happens with ''Eternal Turn of the Wheel'', where the intro is reprised in the final song.
43	* ConceptAlbum: The albums after ''Autumn Aurora'' tend to fit this, in terms of themes:
44	** ''The Swan Road'' used poetry of ''The Haidamakas'' by Taras Shevchenko about the Ukrainian anti-Polish peasant rebellion and ending with destruction of Zaporizhian Sich by the Russian army in 1775.
45	** ''Blood in Our Wells'' seems to focus on the themes of struggle, considering it's dedication to controversial OUN[[note]]Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists[[/note]] leader Stepan Bandera[[note]]While he was considered leader of OUN, Bandera was considered leader of OUN-''B'' due to a division of the organization[[/note]].
46	* CoverAlbum: ''Slavonic Chronicles'' and ''Thousands of Moons Ago''.
47	* CoverVersion: They have covered Sacrilegium (twice), Master's Hammer, Hefeystos, and Unclean.
48	* DespairEventHorizon: "Song of Sich Destruction" is this for the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
49	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
50	** ''Forgotten Legends'' and ''Autumn Aurora'' were the only full-length releases with song titles exclusively in English (subsequent digital releases have added alternative Ukrainian titles for the songs, but not the album). Otherwise, almost all their original material has titles in both Ukrainian and English (the exceptions: ''Anti-Urban'', with titles only in English; ''Microcosmos'', which has an English album title; "Ars poetica", which is [[GratuitousLatin Latin]] for "The Art of Poetry"; and ''They Often See Dreams About the Spring'', whose packaging, including song titles, is almost entirely untranslated Ukrainian. The covers also keep whatever language the original titles were in, but for one song whose original lyrics were unavailable, they used a poem by Ukrainian poet Vadym Lesych, and for two more, they wrote their own).
51	** The first two albums are also the full-lengths whose lyrics remain mostly unreleased, and judging from "Eternal Turn of the Wheel" (the song, not the album), which is the only exception, they're also in English.
52	* EchoingAcoustics: Their production generally tends to go down this route.
53	* EpicInstrumentalOpener: Quite a few of their songs take several minutes before the vocals enter.
54	* EpicRocking: Many of their songs are very long. "False Dawn" is the longest, at just under sixteen minutes long. Discounting intros and outros, their average song length is probably upwards of eight minutes, and only a handful of their songs fail to break the six-minute mark.
55	* FadingIntoTheNextSong: Quite a few songs on ''Songs of Grief and Solitude'' are connected with sound effects. "Sunwheel" and "Wind of the Night Forests" use the same technique on the CD version of ''Autumn Aurora'', but they're separated by a side division on the vinyl.
56	* FolkMetal: It's not their primary style, but there are undeniably folk elements to some of their music, e.g. a lot of the more pastoral moments of ''Autumn Aurora'', ''Blood in Our Wells'', and ''Estrangement''. They could be considered a folk/black metal fusion on many of their albums.
57	* FolkMusic: On ''Songs of Grief and Solitude''
58	* GeniusBonus: Their songs draw lyrics not only from the well-known Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, but also from more obscure Ukrainian poets, many of which whose work has never been translated into English. If you have an in-depth knowledge of Ukrainian history, literature, and culture it surely helps you appreciate their music.
59	** Doubly so for ''The Swan Road'', which is all about the rise and fall of the independent Cossack Hetmanate.
60	* IndecipherableLyrics: Not helped by the fact that many lyrics aren't released. And many are in Ukrainian.
61	* GratuitousLatin: The song title "Ars poetica" translates as "The Art of Poetry" in Latin, while "Recidivus" translates as "Returning".
62	* {{Instrumentals}}: Several. "Smell of Rain" (which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin just rain sound effects]]), "The First Snow", "Ukrainian Insurgent Army", "Fallen into Oblivion", "Only the Wind Remembers My Name", "Widow's Grief", every AlbumIntroTrack, and all of ''Songs of Grief and Solitude''.
63	* LighterAndSofter: ''Handful of Stars'' had a cleaner guitar sound with less distortion, which may have been one of the reasons it wasn't as warmly received as some of their other albums. And, of course, ''Songs of Grief and Solitude'', though that was more of a case of CreatorsOddball.
64	* LimitedLyricsSong: Many of their songs have lengthy passages with no vocals. "False Dawn" is a good example of this, although it's difficult to know how much of an example of this trope it truly is due to the lack of printed lyrics.
65	* LongRunnerLineup: Hasn't changed since 2006.
66	* LoudnessWar: The more widely available Season of Mist remasters are louder than the original releases on Supernal. Luckily, they're not painfully so, and were mastered mostly free of clipping, a trend which has continued up to the band's latest release, ''A Furrow Cut Short''. Vinyl editions seem to be free from this entirely and often sound better for other reasons as well (e.g., harmonic resonance making up for missing frequencies in ''The Swan Road'' and ''Blood in Our Wells'').
67	* NoEnding: ''They Often See Dreams About the Spring'' borders on this; the ending of the final song ("Білявий день втомився і притих…", translated roughly as "The Blooming Day Is Tired and Drowsy…") is abrupt and comes almost out of nowhere.
68	* PostRock: They flirted with this genre on ''Handful of Stars''.
69	* RearrangeTheSong: Most of the songs on ''Songs of Grief and Solitude'' are acoustic and instrumental renditions of earlier Drudkh material.
70	* RecurringRiff: Intro tracks will often be reprised later on the album. For example, "Fading" from ''Autumn Aurora'' gets a different arrangement as the album closer "The First Snow". ''Eternal Turn of the Wheel'' provides another example.
71	* {{Sampling}}: Many albums sample Ukrainian cinema. Nearly every song on ''Blood in Our Wells'' samples the film ''Mamaj'' (''Мамай'', which, at least according to IMDB, can mean either ''No One'' or ''The Spirit of the Steppes'', in a real-life case of TranslationYes; it can ''also'' refer to one of UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan's many great-grandsons), for example. Sometimes these also provide examples of SpokenWordInMusic (e.g., the intro to "Solitary Endless Path").
72	* ShoutOut: Most of their lyrics are lifted directly from famed Ukrainian poets. Taras Shevchenko is the most common.
73	* SiameseTwinSongs: "Summoning the Rain" and "Glare of Autumn".
74	* SopranoAndGravel: Some of the songs on ''Betrayed by the Sun'' and ''Somewhere Sadness Wanders'' have clean vocals in the background, but their primary vocal style is the type three MetalScream typical of black metal.
75	* SubduedSection: They have quite a few, but the ambient midsection of "All Shades of Silence" no doubt takes the cake.
76	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: ''Songs of Grief and Solitude'' was a surprisingly gentle album. "Song of Sich Destruction" also qualifies, though it's actually a song by bandura player Igor Rachok.
77	* UncommonTime: Shows up occasionally, such as the intro to "Solitude" (later reprised as "The Cranes Will Never Return Here").

Context Music / Drudkh