Artist: Drowning The Light
Country: Australia
Label: Dark Adversary Productions
Formats: CD
Year: 2025
Second album in this cycle of five new albums by the maestro of Australian Black Metal, not only known for his insane pace of releasing, but definitely also for the quality of his output as evidenced by ‘Conquer Or Serve I: From Primordial Waters Of Chaos’. That album more or less stood for the beginning of everything, at least in a personal and spiritual way. Azgorh’s vision is to first understand yourself and your everything around you, you need to become one with the elements that spawned you in total isolation, then you can create and become one with the primordial waters of chaos…
After that profoundly more spiritual start of this musical adventure, ‘Conquer Or Serve II: The Natural Law Is Tooth & Claw’ seems to be mostly about more basic instincts. Not only of nature surrounding us, unforgiving and persistent in its own rotations into eternity, but also in the more primal details. Like the wolf in the cover symbolizing that life is a constant cycle, of beauty and horror, of strength and weakness. In that regard this all fits seamlessly into the ouroboros theme, an ever-consuming and swallowing serpent. That same cycle of events is reflected in the turning of the seasons, put onto music on this second album in the new Drowning The Light series.
Other than Antonio Vivaldi, Azgorh is leading us to the beauty and horror of each season with a slightly fierier sort of Black Metal as opposed to the albums from the last several years, but also with the interludes or intermezzo’s that are for the most part built on acoustic guitars and folky melodies. While those sides of the band are not quite unique in the impressive discography of the band, it is when those two collide. That already happened on ‘Conquer Or Serve II: The Natural Law Is Tooth & Claw’, but mostly in a completely different way. Take a listen to the title track for instance, that has an almost Folk or Pagan (Black) Metal connotation. That is mainly fueled by the use of flute and some sort of “clean singing”. While not exactly being the same, it shares a somewhat similar feeling as the last two Bathory albums.
That is not in the least because of the use of these flutes and clean vocals. Because, let’s put it this way, Quorthon was a tremendous musician and a visionary song writer, but his vocals weren’t exactly the best – but, and that is the most important, it fitted the music, even if it might require some ear-training. Both Azgorh’s clean voice (assuming its himself) and Strix’s are far from perfect, but they both exude a certain ambiance that seamlessly fits to the music on offer. The same can be said of the almost clumsy sounding recorder (a wooden flute, often used in primary schools), especially upon some extra spins of the album it fits in the overall musical picture.
In various ways ‘Conquer Or Serve II: The Natural Law Is Tooth & Claw’ is a bit of unusual Drowning The Light album. It has this balancing act of slightly up-tempo Black Metal and the band’s more smooth sound of late but especially the experimenting with cleaner vocals and flutes makes the album an interesting addition to the Drowning The Light discography.
