DRAKEN – Here Be Draken

RELEASE YEAR: 2026
BAND URL: https://drakentheband.bandcamp.com/album/here-be-draken

From the fertile Norwegian underground comes an excellent new outfit named Draken whose eleven-track debut offering charmingly titled Here Be Draken, which will be released via the ever-dependable Dark Essence Records, is guaranteed to melt brains and tear faces clean off.

Consisting of members of such fabulous and musically forward-thinking constellations as Bushman’s Revenge, WIZRD, and Spidergawd, one could be forgiven for thinking that Draken would somehow be progressive-sounding or wildly adventurous, but that is hardly the case. Instead, this spirited opus, which is rather rough around the edges, loud as hell, and full of vigor, is much more akin to hard-hitting heavy metal with pronounced flavors of stoner rock and doom metal thrown into the aggressive mix, and the awesome thing is that it works like a fucking charm. Granted, it took me a little while to absorb the sound, style, and vibe of the entity properly, but after a handful of spins it truly revealed its many qualities and brilliant textures. Parts of it are in the vein of High on Fire, Entombed, early Mastodon, and arguably also Torche, but their fuzzed-out riffs and high-energy outbursts also recall Pentagram and Trouble on a few occasions.

The best and most memorable tracks are undoubtedly the more experimental and unpredictable ones, namely “Here Be Dragons,” “Wrath,” and the epic, prog-esque “Crimson Sun” while album closer “Shitshow” is a dull and anticlimactic entry. Overall, Here Be Draken is a pleasingly punchy and suitably dark effort harboring a primal, earthy feel that gets you right in the chest.