Drudkh

Maintaining secrecy within black metal has long been commonplace, yet Ukraine’s Drudkh—whose name derives from the Sanskrit word for “wood”—pushed the practice further by omitting lyrics from most releases, avoiding visual documentation, and declining every interview request. The project originated in Kharkiv during 2002 when Roman Saenko, already active in Hate Forest and Dark Ages, handled guitars and bass alongside fellow Hate Forest participant Thurios, who also served as Astrofaes vocalist and keyboardist, and Lucifugum’s Yuriy Sinitsky, who contributed drums and keyboards. Although the group drew criticism for appearing to support nationalistic positions, Drudkh maintained that its stance was simply conservative in political and cultural terms, leaving interpretation open. Beyond such debates, the band advanced Ukrainian culture and mythology by channeling them through atmospheric black metal built on folk foundations and drawing textual inspiration, both direct and indirect, from major national poets including Taras Shevchenko.

The debut album Forgotten Legends surfaced in early 2003. This expansive recording supplied the structural model for the follow-up, Autumn Aurora, issued in 2004, whose chief departure lay in a reduced reliance on conventional instruments in favor of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Although Drudkh generally withheld lyrics, the band chose to print them for the next release, 2005’s The Swan Road, most likely because every text derived in some way from Shevchenko’s poetry. Additional Ukrainian poets, along with further Shevchenko material, appeared on the fourth album, Blood in Our Wells, which arrived in 2006 via the Supernal label like much of the catalog.

Issuing two albums within a single calendar year echoed earlier rock practices, yet Drudkh accomplished precisely that in 2006 by pairing the more progressive-leaning Blood in Our Wells with October’s Songs of Grief and Solitude, a collection rooted in Ukrainian folk traditions. The latter contained no lyrics at all, removing any question of omission, and relied on an array of wind instruments paired with minimal percussion, thereby stepping outside even the flexible conventions of black metal. A limited edition of 999 copies of the EP Anti-Urban followed in 2007, signaling a return to more overtly metallic territory, while the full-length Estrangement also appeared that year. Shortly after completing the latter, the band, maintaining a consistent recording pace, reentered the studio to begin work on its seventh album.