Adrift - Dry Soil - review
Adrift - Dry Soil - review
Tracklist
01. Overload02. Concrete
03. Edge
04. Restart
05. Blood Kills The Soil
06. Bonfire
A review by
musclassia February 24, 2025
I can’t speak for their earlier work, but the style performed by Adrift on Dry Soil is the kind of thing that should have caught my attention before now, although perhaps it plays more strongly to my tastes now than it would have done when previous album Pure dropped in 2019. What style exactly am I referring to? Well, one that at its core is affiliated with sludge as a genre, with the odd leanings in either direction towards stoner and post-metal; however, above anything else, its defining characteristic is the oddball, arguably avantgarde twist to the writing that imparts an off-kilter, frenetic energy to many of the songs contained herein.
While at a macro level there’s minimal resemblance, there’s something to the busy, jazzy drumming in tandem with the heavier instrumentation during the opening stages of first track “Overload” that I can’t help but associate with aspects of what Opeth have been doing during their recent dad-prog era. More consistently, however, Adrift feels to me like a sludge-leaning album written from the starting point of bands such as Entropia, Aluk Todolo, and the Oranssi Buddha Rising school of bands (I’m tempted to trial Jun-His-core as a catch-all name to refer to such acts going forward), due to the elements of krautrock, drone and twisted psychedelia seeping into several songs on Dry Soil.
This is not to imply that there’s one singular approach across all songs on the record. After the twisted jazzy dissonance of “Overload”, Adrift’s sludgy core bleeds through more into “Concrete”, albeit with that more primitive fire blended with continued rhythmic fluidity and more sophisticated riffs, and with the bilious blackened shrieks trading off with lower-register roars. In contrast, “Blood Kills The Soil” places its sludginess in a more restrained, repetitive and droning context; it’s a very different vibe, but a similarly compelling one.
On top of that, there’s the instances where Adrift veer towards sludge’s borders with overlapping genres. “Restart” stands out firmly on the record in terms of style – even when accounting for the rest of the record’s diversity – with its stoner rock grooves, fuzzy riffs and guitar lead hooks, with only the busy drumwork really maintaining an obvious connection to the rest of the tracklist. “Edge” feels more naturally a part of Dry Soil, but places bruising sludge riffs, frantic rhythmicity and off-kilter textures within more of a post-metal framework, segueing halfway through into one of the few quiet passages encountered across the record and slowly building back up by way of subtle stoner rock-influenced melodic hints. Capping off and summarizing everything is the album’s final and longest song, “Bonfire”, which progresses from quiet contemplate origins and traverses krautrock grooves, eerie dissonance, soothing tranquility, and sludgy primitivism to ultimately reach a rapid, pounding conclusion.
While the genres that Dry Soil has tethers to are fairly apparent, as a cohesive experience it defies easy classification, switching from one vibe to another with ease while allowing a versatile and relentless percussive display from Jaime Garcia to sustain momentum throughout. Although the ultimate execution of their efforts is perhaps not as consistently compelling as what some of the bands they resemble can offer, Adrift very much make their latest album an album worth exploring.
Written on 24.02.2025 by
Written on 24.02.2025 by
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