Drowning The Light – To The End Of Time [Re-Release]

The last couple of years saw a lot of Drowning The Light’s back catalogue resurface in the form of some well-deserved reissues, mostly through Azgorh’s very own Dark Adversary Productions or via Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions that signed up for a large series of vinyl editions of both new and old material. ‘To The End Of Time’ is the last part of that campaign, originally released as a limited cassette tape back in 2007 it did see a few more reissues later on, but it has been out of print for a decade now.

‘To The End Of Time’ was released in a highly prolific year for Azgorh’s main musical vehicle as it was only one of no less than four full-length albums that saw the light of day within a time span of only a couple of months – not to mention the additional four demos and two splits. So it might not surprise that ‘To The End Of Time’ bears some obvious resemblances with the majority of those 2007 releases, yet I think it is fair to conclude that it belongs to some of the best material that was around that time frame. And, even more important, it marked a certain change in the Drowning The Light formula.

Although there has always been a distinctly recognizable sound within the band’s offerings, but if you’d listen to Drowning The Light today, it echoes only a little of what the band did around its first, embryonical steps. In a way, ‘To The End Of Time’ can be seen as a transitional record of sorts, it still has the somewhat more unpolished and rawer approach of the band’s earliest recordings but it is also definitely emphasizing the trademark Drowning The Light melancholy more than ever before. It is under this constellation that we should place this album and value it as such.

So, musically this can be roughly be found somewhere in the middle between the band’s earlier and much rawer approach to the Black Metal genre and the more melancholic and atmosphere-driven music of today. This makes ‘To The End Of Time’ an interesting record, not only for its specific position in the musical twilight zone of the band’s career, but also for its more textured sound, something that gets more profound on later releases. On top of this all, I personally always loved the album’s flirtation with some more folk elements in the form of strumming and captivating melodies.

On this album Azgorh’s typical vision on Black Metal is really starting to shape in what would grow to be his very signature sound. Something that, at the time of its initial release, didn’t get too much recognition, but it is abundantly clear that time has done justice to Azgorh’s more than alluring and thought-provoking back catalogue. This shift in acknowledgement and appreciation is evidenced not only by the wider range of new material and available reissues, but certainly also by the large growth of band citing Drowning The Light as one of their main inspirations.