Year of release: 2022
Label: Werewolf Records
Rating: 9,7 / 10
As is often the case, the year has barely begun, and the potential best album of the year is right there. The Finnish talent V-Khaoz has been impressing me for several years in a row with either his take on EMPEROR, i.e. VARGRAV, or with his ambient works for DRUADAN FOREST.
For a long time, DRUADAN FOREST worked in fantasy aesthetics, writing gargantuan canvases about dragons, castles, fairy-tale lands. Finn's work showed an amazing combination of deep understanding and professionalism, which is generally extremely rare in any genre of music - usually there is only one thing. V-Khaoz obviously didn't say everything he could say on the subject of fantasy, but real talent does not stand still, so the Finn decided to plunge into the depths of the mysterious sound magic. "Portals" refers to the esoteric and inner microcosm of the musician, radically changing the style of sound and sensations. From the former DRUADAN FOREST there remains a familiar tone of sound, but now it is categorically otherworldly, less dynamic and even deeper ambient, in which, paradoxically, one of the main elements of the sound picture is silence.
If earlier DRUADAN FOREST was best described by the legendary line “I ran away from home, wandered through fairy-tale worlds” of Russian band HI-FI, then now it takes you beyond the physical existence, placing you somewhere “between the transcendent and the real”, as the title of one of the tracks suggests. The impression, let me tell you, is stunning. Thousands of people have gone through tons of paper trying to describe in words the experience of going beyond their own body. Thousands of filmmakers have tried to convey this experience with an unthinkable hodgepodge of colors and crazy imagery. Everything was unsuccessful - and the modest Finn V-Khaoz easily achieved this with the help of his ambient, dynamic enough to avoid monotonousness, and measured enough not to disturb the harmony of the local musical universe. There are albums in the world that are capable of stimulating the listener's thinking and imagination in the most powerful way, and this is definitely one of them. Quite simple on the surface, it hides a whole multidimensional abyss of possibilities. It is MANDATORY for purchasing - such works will never get you bored, their internal resource is inexhaustible.
English (UK) 
Крыўская