Dordeduh – Dar De Duh (2012)

After their excellent teaser of an EP “Valea Omului” back in 2010, the expectation grew immensely for Dordeduh. Consisting of the original song writers of Negură Bunget, this band has had so much expectation leading to this release that while a very solid and unique release, it kind of falls short and feels somewhat underwhelming. While not saying this release is bad, it just feels that it took so long for what it actually is.

Opening with the epic “Jind De Tronuri”, this track eclipses the band’s first EP, duration wise, since it clocks in at 16 minutes. With an excellent atmospheric ritualistic feeling, this track is quite engaging and it nicely builds up to some killer Black Metal sections with some progressive elements reminding us of Enslaved. This whole approach continues on “Flacararii”, but in this track, after the atmospheric section the band chooses to go with a very crappy raw BM part before jumping into the progressive sections. This track also shows that the band sounds a lot like Enslaved in some of their progressive parts.

There is a certain mystery and seductiveness to the multiple atmospheric layers that the band uses, and in songs like “E-an-na”, they are very neatly crafted. The band’s instrumentation is excellent, and the use of so many things elements is very well introduced and layered to allow them to shine alongside the eerie clean vocals. However, when some of the aggressive sections kick in, there is a huge contrast that makes them sound very nasty and tossed together to keep the release being ‘Metal enough’, a clear example of this is “Calea Roitor De Foc”. Instead of keeping the elegance of their atmospheric/folk/ritualistic sections, they just toss in some nasty BM parts, which do mature after a while, but ultimately diminish the impact of the music.

Our favorite track in this release is the unique “Pandarul”, not only because its title sounds like Pandar’s rule, but also because of its beautiful percussions. The use of flute(s) in this track is quite engaging and it gives off that mixture of folk and jazzy sounds that are very appealing to our ears. A funny thing to notice is that the changes between atmospheric and nasty BM sections on “Zuh” and “Cumpat” are almost linked by the same riff, making us believe we heard the same track twice.

Just before the release comes to an end, we have the very ritualistic and engaging “Dojana”. While we love the brilliant atmospheric sections, crafty instrumentation, and excellent vocal layers, we are very disappointed by the nasty Black Metal elements thrown in between. We would have been ok with more of the Enslave-borrowed progressive BM parts, but the whole idea of putting some random brutal section into such amazing songs is beyond our understanding. If you liked Negură Bunget until the “Om” era, this is the album for you. If you like atmospheric/ritualistic stuff and don’t mind some ear-fucking horrible BM parts here and there, check this out as well.

Release: September 25th, 2012

Genre: Atmospheric/Folk Black Metal

Country: Romania