DRUADAN FOREST Portals [CD]

WEREWOLF RECORDS is proud to present DRUADAN FOREST's highly anticipated fourth album, Portals, on CD and digital formats. Comes in a special silkscreened jewel case with blue compact disk.

By now, DRUADAN FOREST should require little introduction. From their demos in the late '90s to the fever of work from 2016 onward, this Finnish entity has created a vast and magickal world like no other. Naturally, it should come as no surprise given that mainman V-Khaoz is an incredibly prolific veteran of the black metal underground during the past 25 years, and concurrently numbers the likes of VARGRAV, EMBRYONIC SLUMBER, and GRIEVE among his endeavors. With DRUADAN FOREST, however, the emphasis has always been on atmosphere and its transportative qualities. Whether the medium is ominous, titanic-gait black metal, cosmic ambient, pure dungeon synth, or some symbiosis of those, it matters not: the story - and the voyage - from this realm to another is paramount.

Such is again the case with Portals, as elegantly simple of a title as there is to be found. Here, DRUADAN FOREST dons a dazzling robe of interstellar ambient glittering with jewels of a most distant hue. No words be spoken, no guitars need strummed; the glacial float through galaxies is the focus here. For those who argue that "nothing happens" in ambient music are perhaps overlooking the form's most crucial construct: the FREEDOM for nothing to literally happen, to go where you want and how you want - and to have NOTHING be in the way. V-Khaoz keenly understands this, and with Portals indeed opens them up to dreamers and stargazers and all lost souls who might be looking for their dungeon in space. Or, perhaps the album's component song titles spell out the path: "Ethereal Eternity Reflects the Images of Vast Eerie Pasts," "In Between Transcendence and True Sleep," and "The Infinite Forest of Galaxies" during just the first half...