Album Premiere: Drouth – Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy

This Friday, Translation Loss Records will release the sophomore full-length from Portland-based black/death group Drouth. Titled Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy, Drouth’s follow-up to their 2017 debut album represents forty expansive, immersive and multifaceted minutes of extreme metal from an ambitious and highly capable outfit.

photo by Raya Jade Photography

According to Matt Stikker, guitarist and vocalist of Drouth, Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy is “a record about death[,] infused with death.” Talking about his band’s latest album, Matt explains: “Death is the framework which gives our lives purpose and meaning. The fragility and absurdity of our institutions and inward psychological constructs is revealed through the physical decomposition and deterioration of bodies, infrastructure, societies. [Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy] observes the inexorable nature of the physical world through the casual violence and absurdity of human existence.”

Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy

Matt continues: “From a thematic standpoint, I think all the various creative facets of this record—musical, lyrical, visual, interpersonal—have coincided and grown together in an unconscious way that exceeded all of our expectations. It feels like we found the space between the joints in reality and the knife slid through it without resistance. I prefer to think of our recordings more as mileposts than plateaus so the most exciting aspect to me is what it means for our direction in the future with John and Tyler now part of the band.”

“This album, for me, represents a new beginning,” says Tyler Wolfe, Drouth’s bassist since 2018.  “I feel like I’ve really found my niche with Drouth. Having kicked around in a lot of bands and other projects that I really enjoyed, ultimately, I wasn’t creating the type of music I’m really passionate about. I was offered an audition for Drouth by a long time friend and soon-to-be collaborator and immediately connected with the other guys; almost organically. After learning some old material we began writing new music and it felt seamless. I feel like we all play off of each other’s energies to create a beast…familiar to the sound of the previous album but infused with the wild energy of John and my own offerings to the riffage…I am very proud of what we have to offer right now and I truly feel like I’m finally in the band that I should be in, making exactly the type of music I want to make.”

“One of the main lyrical motifs of the album is that juxtaposition of the mundane and otherworldly and how when examined from a certain angle the former can give us the greater sense of unease,” Matt explains. “The nightmare version of something familiar is more dreadful than an imagined horror. I think we’ve created something the appearance of which will change depending on which angle you approach it, and if ten listeners have ten different impressions we’ll be satisfied. It’s a garden of forking paths. But I’m just some idiot so play it loud, explore it on your terms and draw your own conclusions.”

Order Excerpts From A Dread Liturgy today.