4 out of 5

Label: Northern Silence Productions

Produced by: Drøüyn

Alder Glade: drawing within the black metal lines with one hand, then coming back with the other to scribble – a controlled scribble! – all over them.

Spine Of the World is a stunning debut, building on / sharpening the slow crawl explosions of Drøüyn’s demos, which were collected on Exordium. Spine dares to show off better production, layering, and more impressive technical playing, with the runtime allowing for thrashier or more ambient-leaning entries, though never straying too far from the kit-bashing, reverbed-howling, razor guitar-shredding core black metal sound; it’s all those extras, though, that lift up that core sound and pay it off.

The narrative here is also interesting, following the artist’s appreciation for nature by detailing our culture’s decline back towards it – stretched over a war against gods that’s either based in folklore, completely made up, or maybe referring to A Wheel Of Time – and ending on a somewhat hopeful note, at least in a world where Drøüyn would rather be without the trappings of culture, and rather surrounded by the green tendrils of the undergrowth. That’s one of those genre juxtapositions Alder Glade executes so well: the lyrics are gloomy stuff, but not necessarily spoken from a nihilistic POV.

Musically, we bookend with some epic length tunes: closer Beltane is perfect, using its 13-minutes to fully build up to its explosive conclusion. The opening title track ends up being the only soft spot, unfortunately, as AD can’t quite prove the need for a quiet bridge and a return to the same chord progressions / volume – it feels more like he just had another round of lyrics to get through. Elsewhere, though, the music is uniformly excellent, taking some wild swings with dense layers of percussion (Lord of the Lakes), pausing for some ambience (Sun Ritual) before going all-out thrash (Kingdom Aflame), and doing a tighter burst of quiet-to-loud dynamics on Wheel of Stars. Drøüyn can’t mask that he can play, and isn’t afraid to do so: drums slam on time; guitars wail; the growled vocals are mixed at just the right level of reverb so you can catch the lyrics if desired, or let the singing sink into the aether.

The high bar set by Alder Glade’s demos is set even higher on Spine of the World, maintaining the heft of traditional black metal with a bolder, more modern sound that arguably makes the material that much more affecting.