There really is nothing quite like trying to survive in extreme cold. It’s a horror that few of us rarely have to face anymore for one reason or another, but we all have an innate fear of a frozen death with good reason. The very environment bites at your flesh, the cold creeps its way into your very soul, the isolation gnaws away at your mind as you helplessly lumber towards help that’s too far away, and the constant predation by all that is nature are just a few of the things you need to worry about in such a situation. Encapturing all that in one album is hard enough to do, but in a drone experience? That seems almost perfect for the style, and it’s through a surprising entry from Escaping Aghartha that it’s done spectacularly.

Given the act’s last album, “Oceanic Womb”, which wasn’t released more than six months ago, was an incredibly varied experience that gave us a heavy dose of what Escaping Aghartha was capable of while simultaneously delivering to us a message that’s as prevalent as ever, “White-Nose Syndrome” is almost whiplash-inducing in its shift. While the themes are still very much intact with the spotlight pointed elsewhere in the world, the musical content is a vastly different creation altogether. A monstrous effort of almost pure drone that’s drenched in blackened flavors, this 30-minute one-song work is a true definition of a proper slow burn with it somehow being the perfect backdrop to the already immensely hostile world of frost-riddled wood is what’s to be found here. Escaping Aghartha needed no proving that it could produce some quality metal that has high expectations of in the future, but it is with “White-Nose Syndrome” that we’re taken down a path that I don’t think any of us could’ve guessed with the metal part of this performance being downright minimal while the all-consuming drones take the main stage for the great vast majority of the 30-minute runtime to accumulate in an uncompromisingly scathing listen that is more than fitting for the already-niche realm that drone calls home. It’s gripping in its vast reaches, mesmerizing in themes, and terrifying in its shapeless chaos. Very few acts are able to show us how versatile they are with only a few daring to bound from one style to another with even fewer succeeding in the face of such a challenge, and it’s against those very odds that Escaping Aghartha has risen to produce something that not only casts further credence behind the very name of the act but power behind it as well.

This is not how I thought we’d be seeing Escaping Aghartha on the follow-up to that aforementioned album, but I couldn’t have asked for anything more fitting for the attitude with which Escaping Aghartha has clearly honed in the current state of the world. Truly, a fitting product of its time in many ways with each layer offering something new to excel the intrigue of what’s to be found. Right from that off-putting first minute to the thunderous silence after it’0s all over, “White-Nose Syndrome” is a spectacular work of drone that is not to be overlooked, and if such ambition and surprise is to be found within the upcoming full-length from Escaping Aghartha, then we better buckle the fuck up.

“White-Nose Syndrome” releases on January 8th!

LISTEN to “White-Nose Syndrome” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Escaping Aghartha on Facebook here.