Despite the generic image of heavy-metal fans as long-haired philistines in denim vests who'd rather be throwing horns than thinking about their world, the metal community regularly wrestles with thorny politics. Sure, there are those who still embrace dragon or goblin talk and explore the complexities of getting the most stoned with the least amount of effort. But within the 40-year-old form, there are clear factions based on fundamental philosophical fractures-- Christian metal versus Christ-killing metal, populist champions versus elitist extremists, good old Southern boys versus idealist art kids. There's metal for being vegan, metal for being skeptical about technology, and metal for crushing authority in all forms. Lots of very good music elects to avoid the issues of the day in favor of songs about love and loss, emotions and escape; heavy metal, however, refuses to accept too much too easy. The genre is its own warzone.
Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent and divisive than in black metal, a field whose forefathers set an instantly high bar for controversy, if not necessarily conversation. In 2012, no one's burning churches in the name of blast beats, but the threads of nationalism and homeland defense that helped fuel those flames two decades ago certainly haven't disappeared. Though it's not a necessary qualification, black-metal bands sometimes champion the vilest forms of xenophobia-- racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism being the trifecta. From the names of their record labels to their insignia to the lyrics on the albums themselves, a mess of these bands either have nothing to hide about their hatred or no sense of subtlety about how to share it; if you need a black-metal band to validate your prejudice of choice, the combination of a Google search and a PayPal account should have their super-limited-edition, ultra-kvlt LP delivered to your doorstep in just a matter of days.
But then there are those black-metal bands that invoke much head-scratching and hand-wringing with fans who want their black metal without race- or class-specific bile and those who, well, want the opposite. Chief among them might be Drudkh, a mysterious Ukrainian band that doesn't do press photos, websites, interviews, or, intermittently, lyric sheets for the nine full-length albums they've made since 2003. (Aside from song titles, the lyrics for their latest, the excellent Eternal Turn of the Wheel, are written and sung entirely in Ukrainian.) But during the last decade, Drudkh have made one thing abundantly clear-- a keen appreciation for and espousal of their country's history. Whether quoting Ukrainian folk music, lifting from various Ukrainian writers, or sampling films about the country's sometimes benighted or controversial politics, Drudkh have expressed deep pride in their Slavic origins.
That makes them provincial, sure, but their broader politics haven't been so simple to decode, especially since they come from a country whose own role in World War II remains an active topic of debate among scholars. Drudkh have named a track for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a violent group who pushed for an ethnic Ukrainian state through whatever alliances they found necessary. Drudkh have also described themselves as "conservative revolutionaries," a movement with slippery ties to specific quests for nationalism in Europe. Sharing members with the tedious, blatantly Aryan band Hate Forest (including founder Roman Sayenko), as well as with Astrofaes, bands who both turn up frequently in talks about Neo Nazis in heavy metal. Still, last year, they collaborated as the band Old Silver Key with Alcest's Neige, a guy who seems to have stepped away from his former political associations to become the peaceful disciple of black metal. They've released tapes via notoriously nationalist Ukrainian imprint Oriana Productions; but like their last two albums, Eternal Turn of the Wheel arrives via Season of Mist, a label whose massive roster stretches from Georgia's Kylesa to Greece's Rotting Christ, from Norway's Mayhem to Florida's Morbid Angel. In short, there's nothing easy to say about Drudkh's politics other than that, well, they're not very easy.
On the other hand, the appeal of Eternal Turn of the Wheel is easy enough to hear. During the last decade, Drudkh have alternately been tagged for their Burzum worship and their folk-music leanings, but Wheel splits the difference by fighting against both typecasts. Built with two pairs of nine- and eight-minute songs (and the requisite mood-setting introduction, of course), it offers a relentless and urgent interpretation of the same canyon-sized stuff that bands like Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room-- and, before them, Katatonia and Ulver-- have steadily pushed toward popularity. On a purely musical level, it's as compelling and cathartic as any such recent marriage of post-rock grandiosity and black-metal grit.
Drudkh have occasionally delighted in their own sense of misdirection, with guitar or bass tangents breaking their massive metal marches into bits, much the way they might in prog rock. But befitting its name, Eternal Turn of the Wheel never squanders its momentum, making these epics feel more like focused conquests than free explorations. About six minutes into "Breath of Cold Black Soil", for instance, the bass takes the lead, its throb the only changing feature among a tide of steady guitars, synthesizers, and drums. On 2010's Handful of Stars, the other instruments might have fallen out of the mix, giving the bass too much room to stretch. But here, the guitars keep swirling, and the drums keep stomping, so that when Thurios' vocals return, they don't feel disconnected from the previous five minutes.
And there's a pause during "When Gods Leave Their Emerald Halls" where the drums ease into a patter and the guitar peels back the distortion for a slight, rippling interlude. Rather than emphasize technicality or individual ambition, the stop only highlights the roar of Drudkh when they return for the coda a few seconds later, all instruments barreling at once. Where Drudkh have sometimes struggled to truss their vision for arrangements to the vitality of those arrangements, Eternal Turn of the Wheel feels like an ego-less union, a quartet gladly cooperating for an exhilarating half an hour. At most any point here, don't be surprised to find your fist in the air, your foot tapping on the floor, or your mind somehow pulling for the conclusion of some dramatic quest. It's that good.
If one of the purposes of art is to inspire conversation and to make us consider contexts that we'd never even imagined, Drudkh have been doing their job from the start. It's OK if you reject Drudkh wholesale because of their potentially problematic politics or past alliances. But Drudkh and lesser bands with the same ideological contradictions or conundrums essentially remind us that music can be an expression of its specific culture-- of ideas which we have the agency to reject or accept, to debate or table for more study. Eternal Turn of the Wheel is as captivating as most any stretch of black metal you'll hear this year, even if it posseses a lifetime of questions that deserve to be asked.
