Last time we uttered the arcane name of Green Druid on this blog, the year was 2018 and while it certainly seemed like the end of the world we didn’t really feel it yet. Well, it’s now 2020 and the heat is definitely on and Green Druid, like a superhero glimpsed through a canopy of decaying trees, have returned to our side. Their new album, At the Maw of Ruin, is slated to descend upon us on December 4th (head on over here to pre-order it) and we are beyond stoked to get to premiere the first single from it, “The Forest Dark”. As expected, it’s a hot serving of psychedelic doom as only Green Druid can make it. Head on below to stream it, all eleven and a half glorious minutes of it.
There’s a lot I could call to your attention here but I want to direct you to about six minutes and forty seconds when the entire bottom of the track just falls out from under us. Green Druid leave us with this slithering, inky version of the track’s main riff, a solitary guitar line slowly gathering more instruments to itself. It’s like a long-dead beast raising its head from out of a tar pit and it showcases just how unique Green Druid are and why we love them. They just sound like nothing else and it’s all to do with track structure. The tones are sludge and doom metal to a tee but the approach to them, the wielding of them into a track, is so uniquely Green Druid.
Which is not to say they’re not just as pleasing; the first six minutes of the track are riff-tastic pleasure as only Green Druid can serve up and the pummeling’s grand return at the track’s outset is just as pleasing. Overall, this is another extremely powerful outing from what is fast becoming one of our favorite doom bands around. Don’t forget to head on over to the excellent Earache Records to pre-order the full thing!