Druadan Forest ‎"The Loremasters Time" CD

Limited 300 copies Hammerbund

V-Khaoz is already a veteran musician who has been on the scene since the late 90's with different projects mainly focused around black metal and different ways of approaching it, however he left the scene around the early 2000's and didn't return to the musical activity until recently after almost 15 years of musical hiatus. Since then, the musician has been undoubtedly prolific as there have been numerous projects in which he has been involved, some of them even gaining quite notoriety in the scene as for example with Vargrav and his style of Emperor worship. But this project called Druadan Forest is the only one that has not been formed after his return to the scene but he had already signed a few demos under this name in the late 90's, maybe this is because he felt he still had something more to contribute musically with this project.
Druadan Forest was born as an exclusively dungeon synth project, and this is noticeable in their current music, when it was reformed V-Khaoz gave the project an epic black metal sound aproach epic black metal highly inspired by Summoning but not quite getting rid of the dungeon synth it had in its beginnings, and this as a result ends up forming the conflict on a musical level that this debut album contains.
I'm sure that during his hiatus V-Khaoz had a lot of time to compose, learn and redefine his ideas, not in vain when he resumed his activity he started releasing albums left and right, but being this one of his first albums released after his return I think he still shows traces of some immaturity when it comes to approach his music because although it seems that the musical idea that sustains the album is clear this is not maintained at any time and causes a constant dissonance. As I already said, the dungeon synth has a lot of relevance in this album, so there are many sections exclusive to this style and at the same time there is a lot of intrusiveness in the compositions more focused on black metal, and although I personally like that, it doesn't feel like it's done in the best possible way because the two styles clash more than blend with each other, the sections with guitars have an exaggerated dense and dark tone, but I think it's more a problem of a poor production than something intentional, but even then the guitars don't sound aggressive and intimidating enough, but at the same time they completely lack melody and don't fit with the synthesizers that make an overly cheerful sounding music compared to the rest of the instruments, creating, when they sound together, a dissonant and clashing sound that just doesn't fit, and if we add to that the, in general, long duration of the songs, they become tedious.
The moments that work best on the album are when the pieces have the musical genres clearly differentiated from each other, V-Khaoz is quite talented when it comes to making interesting dungeon synth and is able to make Summoning worship music without sounding like a soulless clone, songs like "Seven Witches" or "The Queen of Snakes" are the ones that best show this, they have an ominous and remarkable intro thanks to the effectiveness of some simple but grandiloquent melodies on the keyboards and then plunge into an epic immersion with good riffs, a very well worked percussion and a heartbreaking voice that perfectly accompanies the atmosphere. If all the songs achieved what these do, the perception I would have of this album would be different, but many of the other tracks feel unfocused making for an uncontrolled mix of styles full of passion but with little sense of direction.
I can't love this album but I can't hate it either, I could say that it stays in the plane of indifference but I really feel some pity for not being able to connect with it because I like what he proposes but not how he executes it. Even so Druadan Forest has to this day three more albums after this one so the hope that V-Khaoz could learn from his mistakes and get a more focused music is there, and without a doubt this debut has had enough good things to want to see his evolution.

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