Ragana and Drowse have teamed up to release Ash Souvenir, an album about family, grief, and place, via The Flenser. Blending together their black metal and atmospheric soundscapes, the bands drew form the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens to commemorate their home of the Pacific Northwest.
The album's third single, "After Image," is out now on Youtube.
Kyle Bates of Drowse explains the song's significance:
"'After Image' is a song about how self-perception is often linked to place: I tend to want to designate eras of my life around places that I have lived and think of aspects of myself as coming from or belonging to those places. It is also about the desire to forget memories associated with these places. The reality is that, although we may be able to physically move from a place and 'move on' from a person or event, those various aspects of ourselves, and our memories of the events that created them, all make up a greater whole. There is no moving away from the self. We may forget a specific event, but it has still permanently adjusted the shape of our life. In gestalt psychology the 'parts,' are defined by the whole, not the other way around: the dark plume of an eruption is made of thousands of fragments of ash, yet we view it as a single giant clouded form." - Kyle Bates (Drowse)
Ash Souvenir is out November 14th via The Flenser. Listen to "After Image" and purchase the album and merch through the links below.
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