Druma describe themselves as blackened atmospheric postmetal/sludge from Hamburg and include the tagline “LoveMusic, HateFascism” on their Bandcamp page. The music earns both parts of that statement. Sores of Our Time is an album about the present, about what it feels like to exist in a political climate that keeps producing new emergencies, and it sounds accordingly heavy.
“The Fall Of Men” opens with the kind of riff that establishes a band’s register immediately: slow, dark, the black metal influence audible in the guitar tone without dominating the overall sound. Druma operate in the same atmospheric territory as the heavier end of German post-metal, the Ocean at their most sludge-oriented, Downfall of Gaia at their bleakest, but they have their own character. The Hamburg influence is audible in a directness that pure atmospheric metal can sometimes lack.
“First World” and “Disconnected” form the album’s interior, the former developing the opening track’s themes with more space and dynamic range, the latter pulling back before “Until The End” closes the record with the accumulated weight of everything that preceded it. Four tracks is enough. The album says what it needs to say in 30-odd minutes and stops.
Raw and deliberate, the production has the grain of a band that prefers texture to gloss, and the mix favours the low end without losing the black metal treble that gives the guitars their edge. The atmosphere is built through layering rather than reverb, this is dense rather than ambient, the weight coming from the instruments rather than processing. It sounds like a band recording in a room with a specific ideology and no interest in compromise.
Standout tracks: The Fall Of Men, Until The End
Essential listening if you’re tracking what’s happening in German heavy music right now.
