Just over a year after Гра тіней (Shadow Play) — arguably one of the finest entries in their catalog since the early-2000s golden run — Kharkiv's most secretive black metal institution returns with a three-track EP that asks to be heard not as a separate statement, but as a continuation of the same creative breath.
Let's begin where the EP itself does — with the artwork. A painting of mountains and pine trees bathed in deep purple dusk: quiet, painterly, unhurried. For my money, this is the finest cover DRUDKH have ever put their name to, and that's no small claim across a catalog this deep. It sets the tone before a single note plays — stillness, the edge of transition, light that is neither day nor night.
Musically, Thaw is unmistakably DRUDKH. Recorded during the same sessions as Гра тіней, it carries over the exact tonal palette of its parent album — the same guitar tones, the same Saenko riffing, the same Thurios rasp cutting through cinematic keyboard layers. It is, in the most literal sense, a direct continuation rather than a new chapter. Anyone hoping for stylistic reinvention should look elsewhere; anyone who fell under the spell of Гра тіней will recognize this as the same world, slightly narrower in scope and a little more inward in mood.
All three songs are strong. Спогад (Memory) opens the EP with patient, suspended melodies that establish the liminal atmosphere the press materials have been promising. Десь, колись (Somewhere, Sometime) is the most overtly thematic of the three — it begins with the literal sound of running water, the unmistakable trickle of a thaw, ice giving way to motion. After that brief gesture, the track settles into pure DRUDKH signature black metal: tremolo-picked guitars, blast-beat foundations, that particular brand of melodic melancholy the band has spent two decades refining. Мить у вічності (A Moment in Eternity) closes the EP and, for me, stands out a notch above the other two — a fitting title for a song that earns the sense of suspended time it promises.
There is no reinvention here, no surprise turn, no experimental detour. Відлига is exactly what it advertises itself to be: a focused, atmospheric appendix to Гра тіней. Twenty minutes of mood-setting from a band that knows precisely what it is and refuses to be anything else.
If you enjoyed Shadows Play, Thaw is a great dessert.
Listen to the album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7saLvmGPw2A