Portland blackened death metal band Drouth don’t share much about themselves. Their names and pictures are all available online, but besides a photo of themselves in the crowd of a local wrestling show, they’re quiet. Whether this is or isn’t intentional matters not; the result is that their aura comes entirely from their art–wholeheartedly West Coast black metal with winding tracks that swap out the Americana and post-rock influences for death metal. They’ve never been tighter than they are on their upcoming third record The Teeth of Time, which releases in May. A sample is available today through their new single “False Grail,” which you can check out here.
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Only bits and pieces of Drouth’s geographic origins pervade “False Grail”. Though the group comes from Portland, the city’s forests, usually a point of reverence, are far removed from the track. If anything, they isolate and confine. This is to say that “False Grail” pummels and snarls, with a particularly sticky riff rising up two minutes into the track. On the other hand, the shrieks in the track’s final minute have the same frayed quality as older West Coast USBM bands that tapped into the genre’s nihilism. Additionally, the production is hands-off, surrendering control to Drouth and allowing them to convey despair through punchiness, without overindulgent reverb or fuzziness. This is to be expected since The Teeth of Time was recorded and mixed by Billy Anderson, whose long list of producing credits include Dragged Into Sunlight’s Hatred for Mankind and Neurosis’ Through Silver in Blood.
Drouth comments:
We are proud to present The Teeth of Time, a culmination of several years of blood, sweat and pain. It is a nightmare made manifest, and we are both eager to share our creative work and grateful to the many people who helped make it possible.
Bassist Matt Solis adds:
‘False Grail’ is actually the last song we wrote before heading to the studio to record the album. It came together relatively quickly based on ideas that Stikker brought in—he had it pretty well fleshed out, but we made some arrangement adjustments together and expanded the closing doom section to really emphasize the dynamic shift in the song. We also knew we wanted string accompaniment in that section, so we had Eva Vonne from Isenordal add layers of mournful viola after the initial tracking was completed.
Vocalist and guitarist Matt Stikker concludes:
Lyrically, the song is a nightmare reflecting the disconnect between the true and projected self and the increasing tension between those poles that we’re all experiencing. The map is not the territory, but when the map prefigures and gradually dictates the territory, our agency is threatened forever.
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The Teeth of Time releases May 16 via Eternal Warfare Records.
