Black Metal History Month - Dryad : "the Abyssal Plain"

 

This band from Iowa rages with feral energy into their crusty brand of black metal. The scowling vocals sit back in the distance. Not the best production but it does recall black metal of the 90s. Lots of blast beats , but a fair amount of melody that finds it's way into the blazing buzz of guitars. The second actual song starts off more deliberate and the end of speed catches up to it, losing a great deal in translation. The noisy element added by the rough production, sometimes add personality though at other time obscures what the song could be. 

When they indulge their more punk spirit this rawness might be embraced but it also dials the noise factor up which in the case of "Trenches" takes away what they might have otherwise had to offer in terms of songwriting and stirs up a hideous noise. This is carried over into "Loki's Castle "They are capable of creating dark melodic music as heard going into "Pompeii Worm" they chose not to do it. There are almost enough dynamic moments to make this work. When they lean into the conventions of metal rather than punk, the song benefits the most. I like the more death rock like guitar tone going into the title track and wish they have used this more earlier in the album. It gives enough contrast to make their blasting less annoying and give it a context. 

From a song writing perspective their songs stick closer to the three minute bounds of punk. This is fine with me. "Black Smoke" proves when they slow their grind it is worth head banging to. They are however not self aware enough to really see this as it is hard for them to not explode into a seething animal at all times.  There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but without dynamics it becomes noise. Just letting this album play feels like it is a collection of out bursts separated by ambient explorations that are more interesting than the outbursts. I think they should have worked these sound into the fiber of their songs , maybe then more actual music would have been made. I will round this down to a 6.5, if you like punk more than metal this might appeal to you more than it does me,