Drowning The Light are another grim, atmospheric Australian band, part of what seems to be a growing underground cadre of bands from Down Under who play a particularly gloomy and low-fi brand of depressive black metal. This project appears to be the brainchild of a single member named Azgorh, but on their eighth album (talk about prolific!) The Blood Of The Ancients he's joined by a full band. This was released on cd by Dark Adversary, the same label that released the cd for Woods Of Desolation's excellent shoegazey black metal album Toward The Depths, but I've picked up the limited cassette version due to my ongoing infatuation with tapes, and this Hammer of Damnation cassette release came out in a limited run of 333 copies. Anyone that digs the Alcest-in-hell sound of Woods Of Desolation will probably dig this as well, but Drowning The Light are unmistakably black metal, with blurred, buzzing riffs, lots of thrashy midpaced drumming, some frostbitten blastbeat-driven waves of black frenzy, unbelievably harsh gargling vokills, plenty of Norwegian influence seeping into the crusty epic blackthrash. But as seems to be the case with alot of these Aussie bands that I've been getting into, there's a melodic undercurrent beneath the raw low-fi buzz and hateful "vampyric" imagery, with aching majestic melodies rising up on tracks like "The Darkness Is The Guiding Light" and "Residing In A Kingdom Now Lost"; in addition, as you get deeper into the songs on this tape, the band starts to whip out some dreamy Tangerine Dream style keys and even some crooning darkwave vocals, like on "When Dusk Breathes It's Last Breath" and the aforementioned "Residing". It's unusual hearing a black metal album that's this harsh laced with such incredibly catchy, melodic parts, the bits of poppy prettiness bleeding through into this blackened, disgustingly noisy atmosphere. Recommended.