After three wilderness years with doom gods SPIRITUS MORTIS and LORD VICAR, electronic warriors TÄHTIPORTTI, and black metal sorcerers AZRAEL RISING, Sami Albert ”Witchfinder” Hynninen is back in business with OPIUM WARLORDS.

 

DRONER is the fourth Opium Warlords album, it and brings Hynninen’s uncompromising musical vision to its most sparse form. It is noisy lo-fi riff music consisting only of particles unquestionably necessary; but at the same time with a musical spectrum that is very wide and open. It is experimental and avantgarde, still with roots deep in the very heart of heavy rock music. It is concrete blues, diving to the existence and the smallest molecular spheres of minimal riffs, and what seems to be an endless repetition of them. From these rather skeletal elements it occasionally reaches neo-classical, even medieval spheres and death romantic chambers of apocalyptic folk. Onto all of this, disturbing lyrics are chanted by unnamed, hostile protagonists. The lyrics come entirely from outside, already existing sources: a book written by Finnish culture radical Jouko Turkka, a ritual of Ndembu people, and a letter written by scarlet woman Marjorie Cameron. The purpose here is to create a soundtrack that pictures and reflects the contents of the textual force. The result is primitive and brooding sonic landscapes of war, ritual and death. Gone is soothing warmth of the predeeding album TASTE MY SWORD OF UNDERSTANDING. DRONER is all about nuclear war, and clear post-apocalyptic primitivity of the surviving culture. It is torturing purification through purgatory, to a new world and new form of life.