Recommended for fans of: Abigail Williams, Weakling, Woe
Since I was lucky enough to attend another edition of Northwest Terror Fest this year it only seemed to make sense to me to dedicate this edition of The Synn Report to a band I was lucky enough to see for the first time at the festival a couple of years back.
Of course, this wasn’t my first exposure to the feral Black Metal ferocity of Portland’s Drouth, as I wrote some pretty positive things about their second album, Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy, back in 2020 (a review which I have partially cannibalised for this article), but getting to see them rip it up live in Seattle last year definitely increased my appreciation for their increasingly savage, scorching sound.
And what better way to show my appreciation than to feature all three of their albums, including their recently-released third full-length The Teeth of Time, in this month’s edition of The Synn Report?
2017 – KNIVES, LABYRINTHS, MIRRORS
Putting their most ferocious foot forwards, the band’s debut album kicks in hard and heavy with the appropriately bestial and bone-breaking strains of “Horse Crippler”, whose blend of abrasive guitar work and wild, whirling percussion – walking the line between punishing precision and barely-controlled chaos for just over six swirling, swarming minutes – conceals a menacing melodic undercurrent which rears its sinister head at key moments.
It’s a vivid, visceral, and vocally venomous start to the record, that’s for sure, which the even more raging “Basilisk/Basilica” – following its misleadingly moody intro – then picks up and runs with, deploying even more scorched-earth riffage and dizzying, dervish-like drums (courtesy of ex-Uada/ex-Vermin Womb sticksman Patrick Fiorentino).
Continuing to pull no punches, “A Shrine of Severed Tongues” comes roaring out of the speakers (or headphones, depending on how you’re listening to it) in a deluge of dissonance and disharmony, driven by a barrage of bone-rattling blastbeats, before settling into a brooding, bass-driven groove in the song’s darker, doomier second half, after which “Right Hand of the Adversary” introduces a little more melody into the proceedings, both during its ringing introductory lead and its shredding mid-song solo.
With “The Disquieting Muses” the band then raise their game even further, combining hypnotic repetition and hammering aggression with an even more intricate arrangement of lacerating, yet multi-layered, guitar and bass work that balances raw energy with surprising technicality, before caustic, cathartic closer “Burial Mounds” brings things to an end in a choking blaze of simmering gloom and rampaging riffs, interspersed with moments of grim, grimy groove and passages of piercing, predatory melody.
2020 – EXCERPTS FROM A DREAD LITURGY
With a sharper sound – though, to be clear, there’s still a raw, ragged edge to the band’s delivery which allows the album as a whole to feel just as organic and spontaneous – Excerpts… bursts into life with the blast-propelled violence of “A Drowning in Sunlight”, whose serrated guitars and scalding vocals cut through the gloom and grime even more clearly this time around, building to a morbid mid-song diversion into darker, more atmospheric territory which helps tie both harsh and harrowing halves of the song together.
Sticking with this theme, “An Apiarist” further sharpens the melodic side of the band’s sound – while still maintaining a nastier, gnarlier sensibility than, say, their countrymen in Uada (to whom Drouth have occasionally, and slightly erroneously, been compared in the past) – by weaving in a multitude of lethally infectious lead guitar melodies throughout the song’s nearly ten minute long cavalcade of twists and turns, after which “O Time, Thy Pyramids” builds up both the melodic and atmospheric aspects of the band’s identity, further deepening the lingering and deep-rooted tension which forms the foundation of the band’s sound.
It’s penultimate track “A Repulsive Act Shrouded In Flesh” (which, in my opinion at least, probably should have been the album closer… especially considering its enigmatic instrumental outro) that really showcases how much the band have stepped up their game this time around, however, building from a doomy, gloomy intro into a howling hurricane of distortion and discordance which, nevertheless, conceals an array of hidden hooks and subtle melodic touches amidst all the repulsive fire and fury.
And then, lastly, there’s the seething tremolo runs and unexpectedly infectious grooves of “A Crown of Asphodels” which balances hookiness and hatefulness – not to mention sheer, abrasive harshness – in equal measure in order to bring the album to a fittingly ferocious (albeit somewhat abrupt) conclusion!
2025 – THE TEETH OF TIME
For their third album the band have opted for a slightly cleaner, crisper auditory approach – though don’t for a minute entertain the thought that they’ve “sold out” – that nevertheless continues to emphasise the frenetic intensity of their sound, with raging opener “Hurl Your Thunderbolt Even Unto Death” marrying menace and melody (including a pair of short-but-scintillating solos) in a manner reminiscent of Woe at their best.
The pure riffosity of “False Grail” then keeps up the furious pace of the album, with the continually impressive percussive prowess of drummer Patrick Fiorentino and the lithe, limber bass-work of new (ish) bassist Matt Solis (ex-Cormorant) playing a more prominent role in beefy up the grim ‘n’ groovy low-end of the song’s second half (which concludes with the sort of mournfully doomy ending that recalls Abigail Williams at their darkest).
Guitarists Matt Stikker and John Edwards crank out some of their heaviest riffs during the title track “The Teeth of Time” (with Stikker also cutting loose with some of his harshest vocals, ably aided and abetted by guest appearances from Ludicra‘s Christy Cather and Laurie Sue Shanaman), while Solis nimbly noodles away in subtly proggy style beneath the tumult of twisted tremolo and scorching chords, after which “Through A Glass, Darkly” introduces some unexpected (but not unwelcome) acoustic guitar work to serve as a compelling contrast to the more aggressively distorted attack which dominates the majority of the track (until it switches styles to a more proggy and introspective approach during the song’s second half).
Lastly, but by no means least, “Exult, Ye Flagellant” returns to the darker, doomier feel first touched on at the end of “False Grail” – the slow, sonorous chord progressions during the intro and outro serving to perfectly book-end the blistering intensity (and sombre atmospheric sensibilities) which form the core of the song’s twisting, turning Black Metal rampage – hinting at a new potential direction for the band to pursue on album #4 (which, hopefully, won’t take quite as long to make)!