We recently listed the breathtaking fourth album from Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh here at Crucial Blast, entitled Blood In Our Wells...that album was the first we had heard from Drudkh, and we were entranced by the bands mixture of Burzum influenced buzzing black metal and dramatic, atmospheric, vaguely indie-metal melody. Since then I have been trying to track down more of Drudkh's releases, and here we are with their second album, 2004's Autumn Aurora, which is just as incredible as anything else we have heard from them so far. While it's difficult not to notice all of the black metal elements that Drudkh possesses (the raspy, bestial vocals, the buzzy hyperstrummed guitar chords, and the poetic woodland imagery in their lyrics and artwork) Drudkh have a sound that is more hopeful and majestic than grim and hopeless, downright beautiful actually, a perfect sonic manifestation of the cold Autumn skies and sunset textures and forestscapes that appear on the albums package. All kinds of non-black metal sounds are worked into their music, from the often-angular riffs and post-rocky guitar melodies, brief moments of folk guitar and droning keyboards, to the soaring, emotional melodic leads that appear all over this album, all worked together into a beautiful, mystical, majestic mid-tempo heaviness. Mathy and angular, melodic and buzzing, amazingly catchy and heavy, alternately reminding me of the melodic post-metal of bands like Isis and Pelican, Swans' Love of Life, and the dreamy post-BM vibes of bands like Velvet Cacoon and Caina, but much heavier and more epic. Extremely recommended!