With seven tracks, being them Intro – Approaching the Netherkeep, The Whispering Moon, Seven Witches, The Loremasters Tale, Timeless Quietness, The Queen of Snakes and A Blazing Crimson in the Horizon, melancholic vibrations, solid slow burn melodic symphonies, an agonizing stringent voice and strident guitar lines are the main characteristics of the album, although Druadan Forest’s sound definition can’t be limited to these distinguishing blaze of qualities. With a sinister layout that creates an atmosphere of agonizing and tense unforeseeable expectations, nevertheless, the songs on The Loremasters Time are definitely made up of reinvigorating elements, characterized by a very sentimental and nostalgic appeal, that I usually call “emotional” black metal, for having so many elemental, beautiful and poetic harmonies, that at the heart of the substance, incorporating the songs, relies a golden essence, so these songs can be sung almost as if they were true anthems of the soul, really appealing to your personality, to your personal values, to your loves and to the inner spirituality of your perceptions. So, to describe in just a few words, a true, beautiful, elegant and poetic BM album. An album that, although aggregates new elements to the old tradition, really rescues the good ancient values of the genre, truly representative of what Black Metal really is. An album to be proud of!
In line with a more philosophic and reflexive school of the genre, the soft, slow and reverberating approach that concatenate the rhythms of the songs truly forms a great panel of artistic intuitions, that unravels a finely sensible and increasingly poetic style of music. Forty seven minutes long, this album is certainly for the more considerate and spiritually gifted. A balanced, expressionist, nuanced, methodic and profound work, The Loremasters Time is not an album for all metal heads. Only the more sensitive and intelligent ones will truly identify with a work of this magnitude.
Certainly, this album by Druadan Forest is not for everyone. A great album that inserts a classic overview of harmonies, slow surreal emotions and anxious rhythms into a Black Metal atmosphere, The Loremasters Time is a high demonstration of supreme art, in the BM genre. Only the true genuine black metallurgists out there will listen, understand, love and appreciate.
Wagner