Drown (OR-USA) - Subaqueous (2020)^{Release ID: 17400}

I don't typically do Funeral Metal or Depressive Suicidal Metal because most of the music found within is exceptionally nihilistic, but lacking any of the higher stakes. But the newest album from Drown, the brainchild of Markov Soroka has been received favorably in the early stages, so I decided to check it out.

Okay, so this album is the continuation of Unsleep, a project released in 2014 that supposedly tells the story of drowning at sea as our main characters (Mother Cetacean & Father Subaqueous) watch and we get their reaction as they lose their son. One thing I will say right out of the gate is that while Subaqueous is certainly the harder album to digest, I also think that it's slightly better than Unsleep. The songwriting has vastly improved and the instrumentals are able to tell an ever evolving story through melodic motifs and phrases repeated and modulated. And this isn't just through the individual movements, but across the two parts as well. I was very impressed to hear how the opening idea from "Mother Cetacean" was modulated and contorted into the bridge of "Father Subaqueous". I also enjoyed how, more so on "Mother Cetacean", the track picks up intensity through it's run time, making for what could be a painful listen, a lot more bearable.

However, there is something to criticize and that is the vocals. These tracks are delivered in the third person perspective, with the exception of the final lines of "Father Subaqueous". As a result, I don't understand why Soroka uses filters on his vocals to make him sound like he's underwater. If this was a first person telling, fair enough, but I had a hard time understanding anything that Soroka was saying. When I look on recent death doom metal albums that I have enjoyed (Songs From the North, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Death of Gaia, The Plague Within) each album has clear, crisp vocal deliveries from their vocalists. I would expect on a funeral metal album like this that vocals would take prominence, just as they would from any Emo band or Depressive Suicidal Metal.

As a result, I found this album to be a little tedious. Not bad by any stretch, but not an album you can just pick up and play. And as I mentioned off the top, it is lacking in any of the higher stakes, since it is told from a third person perspective, rather than being delivered straight from the source. Still, the music is strong enough on its own to save this album from mediocrity. Tread lightly upon these waters.

Markov Soroka, the main man behind Drown, is also the driving force behind atmo-black projects Aureole and Krukh as well as genre-bending Tchornobog. Drown is the banner under which Markov releases his funeral doom and Subaqueous is the second album he has released as Drown, following 2014's Unsleep.

It features only two tracks, but eack clocks in at over twenty minutes, so you are unlikely to feel short-changed. The album does have a concept as such, track one, Mother Cetacean, relates the sorrowful tale of a grief-stricken mother who has lost her son to the sea and, unable to live with her grief, decides to join him by wading out into the water and being dragged down to the watery depths, accompanied by a grieving whale whose young have also succumbed to the ocean's crushing weight. Second track, Father Subaqueous, tells of the ghost of the young man as he is imprisoned in the ocean's bottom and his horror as he perceives his mother's lifeless body dropping down to join him in his lightless grave.

The album does have a moderately quick tempo for funeral doom (although, obviously, these things are relative) yet it is still heavingly heavy, with thundering drums, cavernous vocals and distorted riffs, but there is also a lighter side to it with the chiming, melodiousness of some of the overlaid guitar work, especially on Mother Cetacean.

Markov Soroka is extremely adept at creating depressive and dark atmospheres and here he is aided by the production which was handled by Esoteric's Greg Chandler and successfully invokes the irresistible nature of the tidal ebbing and flowing of the oceans and the sheer weight of the countless fathoms of water, pressurizing the depths into a suffocating, airless doom.