Artist: Drowning The Light
Country: Australia
Label: Dark Adversary Productions
Formats: CD
Year: 2025
As the third chapter of the cycle of five new albums of Drowning The Light Azgorh is taking another trip through the mind and the conquer or serve contradiction. Where the first album took us back to the foundations of your being and the second showed us the beauty and cruelty of life’s cycles, this time we going for a more philosophical introspection. ‘Camelot’ symbolizes our own idealized life and dream world, some sort of an utopia in which we are our own king and we chase our own holy grails. We are all our own noble kings whose knees will never bend. Yet, in our own quest to reach that that utopia we meet the dreams of others, consequently, our Camelot is never reached and the grail never found. In Azgorh’s own words: “Camelot will always end in flames”.
Well, with that dark mood, it is not surprising that ‘Conquer Or Serve III: Camelot In Flames’ has become one of the most melancholy Drowning The Light albums of late. Of course, melancholy has always been one of the main ingredients of the band and the majority of its recordings convey a certain moodiness and especially in recent years, the band warrants somber records. Still, this album feels like a particularly bleak and desperate one.
Musically it is more heavy on the organs and the guitars do have a bit sharper tone, which together blend into a dark and dreary atmosphere. While the opposite is by no means the case with the band’s back catalogue, this album feels extraordinarily cohesive. Like every track and all the interludes are woven together with even more personal and spiritual involvement. Or it can just be me, that this is something that hit me harder than usual – in the end, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Besides the dark and moody feel of the album, I personally also love the medieval atmosphere. The interludes, in a positive way, remind of some mid 90’s computer games and those precious midi-like Dungeon Synth releases from around the 00’s. In addition the harpsichord-esque interludes do strengthen the archaic feel – maybe together with Camelot and the holy grail another link to the King Arthur legend.
In the review of the second album I cited the Bathorian off-key vocals and flutes to fit the music, in the very right Quorthon tradition. Well, this album has none of that, instead it has some really messy drumming. Especially in the title track it makes you frown a few times, but again, it all fits the overall picture of the music. It has a certain charm, music shouldn’t be polished and flattened out by pro-tools. Exceptions aside, imperfection often holds much more emotion and purity.
Regardless of whether or not this third installment might be slightly more of a personal reflection of mine, all things considered, it is one of the best Drowning The Light recordings in recent years. And if not for the musical content, at least the album showed that Camelot is something that is not true and a quest for the grail will have no happy end, so “on second thought, let’s not go to Camelot, it’s a silly place…”.
