(Vizzah Harri is both back home and back at NCS after a hiatus and has brought with him a group of reviews, with the following typically fascinating one focused on the 2025 album by I don’t do drugs, I am drugs from the UK.)
Delaying things can cause them to grow in size from a molehill into an impassable reach. That sheer face presenting its final summit you can’t even process for the valleys, outright tears and fissures in the earth leading up to it, woods less penetrable than a despot’s drive toward self-preservation, and stacked with ghoulish specters of the darkest deepest reaches of self-nebulized phantasmagoria of your brain that need more than a score of filthy twenties to roll to beat. Internalizing these beasties and challenges as this big thing you’ve got to surpass to attain a summit that does not exist in anyone else’s mind. And that is the scariest part.
Time is only the enemy if one so chooses to enter in melee against it. Harrowers of darkened benthic silts. Grubbing and raking, digging deep with numb appendages in them already murky waters of untruth, to meet that sweetest slice and gash, that prick and tear, that hack and rip, of the bloodletting surety of the acidulous blades and pincers of veritas. Fleeting elation as that sinking in and setting of sedimental disdain for the passage of sands still nascently swishing in the alluvial flow of streams and seas of air.
Not there to appease, indifferent as the universe is void of matter, as finite our time in what we call a here, so infinite is that abyss, and only it. And in that bounded demarcation, is it not better to bleed oneself anemic, to skin and scalp oneself ‘til nothing can grasp anymore for the very phalange bones sliced, dissected, and rived to stubs, to cleave one’s face with it, to then blind oneself in its serrated yet honed to a burning certainty for it being so malevolently and sharply whetted, yet malice it holds not.
Just another certainty, that the nebulous murk it be surrounded in, need not be there. The greatest gift one can give to the self, is to adhere to the indifference, to void-stomp one’s skull on the mace of enlightenment to unlock the final quarry of a quickening of entropy. The veneer of that empty hope you try to pile on your every day is carried by your very pores and gristle.
A cheapening like that of tainted glitter, like the fine microdust of asbestos, like lead poisoning, the designed ubiquity of this belief in scarcity leads to that maxim that if enough people believe in one thing then it becomes true for them, seeing as the mind is the most powerful drug, and words are the spice, used to twist the legitimacy of things, the ordinance of things.
This piece is an attempt to steal some time back. The concept of time can be philosophized as an illusion, yet a bigger myth envisioned, sculpted, practiced, and enforced is that of our relationship with passing. It’s not so much that our resources are finite, it is less of a strong premise to hold that resources might run out and attach value to that which is most rare. Time is the true currency. Rest in peace all your fallen. I don’t do drugs, I am drugs‘ s/t was conceived as tribute to a friend of the creator who passed away.
Vales of diction, a valediction.
May the scarab shield your heart’s essence
in passage t’wards that other domain,
& verse’s thaumaturgic incant
keep unaverred your ciphers, & strain
That there is a heavily tampered translation of a poem by Johann De Lange who passed on 27 March this year. The original title is ‘Groet’ or ‘Farewell’. It serves as fitting quatrain for all those whom we have lost. The introduction preceding it is an excerpt from a poem written earlier this year that accompanied a piece of hell’s elevator muzak that might never see the light of day.
I Don’t do Drugs, I am Drugs is a new self-titled album that got released back on January 27th of this year and they hail from Ellon in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. It is not about drugs in the traditional sense. Yeah, the cover and title might be misleading, but it is simply a Dalí quote. A dude who didn’t do drugs. He proclaimed that he was, in that instance, the drug. His hallucinations coming from within. Not too big of a leap, for all the hallucinations you have ever experienced have come from within your brain, however it has been enhanced or tainted by substances, experiences, or the lack of sleep.
In an interview with Paloma Chamorro, Salvador Dalí was quoted as uttering “I don’t do drugs, I am drugs.” The original transcription runs as follows:
“Yo no he tomado nunca ninguna droga, como ustedes saben, ni alcohol. Ni marihuana. Nada, nada que. Agua mineral es lo máximo que puedo tomar. Pero, Dalí es la droga. O sea, ustedes pueden tómenme, porque soy alucinógeno.” / (“I have never taken any drugs, as you know, nor alcohol. Nor marijuana. Nothing. Mineral water is the most that I can take. But, Dalí is the drug. Or, as it were, you can take me, because I am hallucinogenic.”)
If you’re more inclined towards visuals and audio it’s viewable in the documentary Revelando a Dalí at 00:01:35. To demonstrate how difficult it is to discern what is real in today’s landscape of questionable art, just look at this creation of more than half a century ago:
Salvador Dalí – The Hallucinogenic Toreador (Oil on canvas, 1969–1970), Wikipedia
IDDDIAD as acronym for the Dalí quote “I don’t do drugs, I am drugs” looks a bit like ILLIAD, which is derived from the phrase ‘Ilias poieis’, poem of Ilion, or poem of Troy. Don’t worry, none of the links here or previously shared contain any trojan viruses, though the album you are about to delve into might indeed contain a wooden horse or two. What IDDDIAD crafted is a drug.
Dreich means bleak, new word for me. The sounds presented in it are anything but, however the vocalizations are nothing short of creepily ominous. With clean tones and a structural outlook of a modern classical album interpreted through prog metal as an opening.
The clarity with muted haunting tones opening strike just that right amount of disconcerting before being met by the distortion and full array of symphonic leads and percussive heft.
The intro drops us back into a cinematic soiree of halting horns and bass notes with some outright bleats to act as precursor for what is to come.
Nemophilist boasts some of the most accessible heavy singing which makes this album fall right into the non-meme category of music.
The drums and rhythm section work magic in weaving a driving force compelling one even before the bridge hits leading to the chorus. On the first full track IDDDIAD showcases on their s/t record we are gifted with a piece of music with so much attention to detail as far as precision in salience and anyone choosing to submerge into a world of finely curated sound would find ASMR-levels of satisfaction.
The fluttering accents of alien birds, or susurrations of what sounds not like the mellow and calm swish of a breeze through a brook, but the purposeful flight of the shuriken, or perhaps just cicada wings. That sound is not just there as an affectation. The bassline at 3:40 leading to one of my favorite parts on the whole album at 3:44 with the re-entrance of the drums are a direct sonic reference.
Our first line of vox, “Sleeping under the tree / Living, breathing being” is an indication that this record is not at all what it first seems to be; few bands have been able to organically render onto vinyl that which the nature around us provides as rhythm, as largesse, as meditative food for contemplation.
It is an audiophile’s dream. Nemophilist should have been an indication, for it is the word describing those lovers of forests, especially ones who choose to visit them often.
The levels on Nemophilist are supreme, layered with a finesse of showcasing the shadows of towering trees with light penetrating the canopy and life ever present even in the scurrying of wasp antecedents with flurries of their avian cousins interposed with the bulk of mammalian trudgery.
Pulsing Larvae is the inciting moment, where the album really sinks its teeth into Giger-esque bones as the music builds in intensity with chants of “swarn/swarm/sworn/it’s overwhelming.”
The harsh vocals directed towards perhaps man’s misconception of saving an earth that does not need saving, for below our ocean of air and underneath the surface of the biggest lung we’re defiling in the name of progress is a promise, that when we’re gone in our quicker than a blink in the greater span of time, life will still keep proliferating.
The harshest opening of a song on this album is that of Biome of Decay and even in this track there is play with not just one color of the palette, their prism one of kaleidoscopic virtuosity. To take the smallest little moment repeated a trillion times over every day on earth of a leaf falling, a step in the entropic truth of decay that is our biome.
A commentary on our earth’s fire and brimstone, its apathy, its beauty, and indifference. Its marvels in blight and putrescence, its wondrous powers of captivation and its whispering sighs of terminus.
This is a progressive album with an immensity of theme impossible to capture in but one LP length. With lyrics that could have sounded cheesy, maybe it does to some, different strokes. The sincerity and verve it gets delivered with made me sit up and notice. The space the drums earn and give to the other instruments in a fine interplay of unlocking the closest to a 3D or 4D experience for that matter in sound when my eyes are closed. I don’t need a video accompanying it, although the band did release a few.
This album exemplifies, for me at least, the power of the word, of the idea, of creation. That through the endless degeneration, the infinite unending strife of order and entropy, when one truly takes notice, the beauty is not just in that which is newly birthed. This is not some weak argument for moral fence-sitting on the nature of evil; it’s simply that in passing there is wonder to be had too.
IDDDIAD like longer song structures in keeping with proggy sensibilities. The clean singing is absolutely stellar on here, not that the layered harsh vox aren’t. This album has been a constant companion to me this year so far, where it seemed like I was just another frond falling into a maelstrom of rot.
When IDDDIAD enact a reprise of a melody, a motif, a line, it is never wasted or overstayed, there is momentum at all times. Never stagnant. The tree that died in its sleep really stood out and instead of wriggling into my head it tunneled under my skin. Perhaps the whole second half of this album is stronger than the first, which acted as pretense for the true meditative and sonic journey one is sent spiraling on as its literal earworms burrow past the tympanic membranes into the brain.
Scott Hogg assured me that this video does not contain AI art, although the still that served as imagery for the singles nearing the end is unmistakably rendered.
On Coniferous we get the cipher for the album, a reemergence of the solitary tree. The lyrics are beautifully written and contains a wonderful line in:
“The peeling bark is prized for its tone”
According to Scott Hogg, “the lyrics are themed on the fragility of nature,” but it’s also a tribute to a dear nature-loving friend of his that passed away. His name was Ian. They also shared with me that they are influenced by varied styles in music, though they “have always been drawn to huge productions and bands with an epic sound. Especially artists like Devin Townsend, Type O Negative and film scores.” It computes.
As their self-titled drug-themed name suggests, it might be a good album to dabble in reality-augmenting substances. However, the album is mastered perhaps too cleanly for some tastes; for what it set out to achieve and for my green ears, it stands as a testimony to balance, to the grandeur and the magnificence found in the world around us. If there is an antithesis to anti-cosmic black metal (if ever there was an opportunity to use antidisestablishmentarianism in an article about music traditionally not of the establishment, this would be it lol), this could be perceived as wholly cosmic for its emulation and homage to the mother that birthed us in all her furious elegance, grace, and wonders even in decomposition. I leave you with a hacked excerpt from The tree that died in its sleep:
“Hold a wake for the treeline
The carcass covered in flies
the glacial retreat, the granite scarring,
Even the resilient suffer and die
Clouds above and earth below
The moss changes colour, the tree decays
Subsoil depleted deep down underground
Prepare for the violence or suffer in silence.
Mourn for the tree that died in its sleep, mourn for the tree that died in its sleep
Die, become one within thy birth”
I Don’t Do Drugs, I Am Drugs are:
Scott Hogg (Cyclops Cataract) on keys, guitar, bass, drum programming
BP M. Kirkevaag (Madder Mortem) on vocals.