Album Review: DRUIDS Have Built A “Monument” Of Heavy Groove

Over the past few years there’s been an overwhelming growth in bands that are taking us back in time to when rock and metal moved you. Not just headbanging but swaying, tapping, and just getting lost in the music. We’ve got it with Ghost, Crobot, Lucifer, and with Druids. The irony is Druids seems to be getting the least recognized for it but that might change with their new album Monument.

Monument hits you with amazing riffs, melodic vocals, harsh vocals, grooves, and more in just a 27-minute hit. To get that much into any album nowadays usually takes longer and yet this trio manages to deliver quicker than Dominos.

The opening song “New Breath” is anthemic. A chorus that’s easily remembered surrounded grooves that take you where they want. It’s almost like it’s a car engine starting before a journey. The riffs of Luke Rauch playing off the drums of Keith Rich are like pistons perfectly in sync with the gears rolling down the highway on a summer afternoon.

The journey continues and the drumming of Keith Rich just completely takes over on “Mirrors of Trigon” with the bass of Drew Rauch leading you along the edge. The guitars and vocals are there but more like lights passing on the highway. The drums are the driving force with the bass as your guide. The intensity coming from the drums through the speakers feels like the band is in the room with you and not being transmitted by electronics from an audio recording.

That intensity then gets speed added to it by the properly named “The Whip”. Not only has the speedometer gone up by about 20 MPH from the previous tracks but you could close your eyes and see Luke Rauch’s fingers whipping up and down his guitar as he flies through riffs that sound like they came from the 1970s, audio time travel if you will.

Druids has hit on a sound that’s been growing for years, that old school sound but for the modern era. Up until now they’ve been under the radar but Monument has something for true metal heads to sink their teeth into and could be a hidden gem of all the albums we’re getting in 2019.