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The Fruit of Barren Fields

by Dreichmere

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Sweet William
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Sweet William Fantastic album. I received my CD today along with a very nice handwritten note from Dustin Matthews. Very kind words thanking me for my support and wishing me well in 2021. I was excited to get the CD but the note? Man, that made my day. Favorite track: Lamentations.
bcb723
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bcb723 Really enjoying the entire album. An emerging and diverse voice in metal. Each track is its own world of sound with sci-fantasy lyrics, clean melodic guitar lines, progressive songwriting and even a surprise female vocal that works extremely well. I get the Opeth comparisons but don't play it out. Dreichmere is pushing boundaries in progressive death metal with a singular sound. Oh and badass guitar solos on top of everything else... check out the 21 minute "The Wild Hunt" to see what I mean. Favorite track: Lamentations.
Arrogant Bastard
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Arrogant Bastard Dreichmere immediately evoke an (old) Opethian vibe with long-form songwriting and a highly progressive death metal feel infused with a litany of dreamy acoustic passages. While perhaps not as refined as Opeth, it’s a promising harbinger of an new up-and-coming band and a worthy listen. Favorite track: The Winterlong.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    The Fruit of Barren Fields on cassette, comes with a lovely J-Card featuring the entire lyrical journey of the album, brought from beyond the abyss by Life After Death
    lifeafterdeath.bandcamp.com
    Cassette available in yellow or black.

    Comes with stickers!

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Fruit of Barren Fields via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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    edition of 18  8 remaining

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1.
Pfingstlich 11:10
Clawing through cold clay I writhe at her odious whisperings As pallid dusk to sanguine dawn she weaves. Ablaze, brighter in mockery she shines As feeble summer is cloven in twain. Asunder I spread the roots, entwined Like stagnant threads of gossamer spun In this graven womb No longer inhumed. Together we drink, in her lurid stain, The seeping nectar of Summer's veins While naked boughs upon her rays Shadowed arabesques trace. They weep at my coming Their once gleaming swathe Of garments fade At the waning of light and life I from dying earth emerge A wraith wrought beneath With sunken eye and soiled caul, Molded Of carrion and sallow verdure As if at the hand Of a blind demiurge A dismal night-bird's screeching call Enfolding the wilderness; footsteps fall; the moon's bloodstained embers glow.
2.
Ten thousand winters forlorn Betwixt the harvesting scythe And hawthorn scepter's blaze Trees like haunting sculptures Have ever girt the way Ten thousand winters past... The seasons were mired in grey The heavens churned in languid streams- Tempests thrashing on silver mirrors And horns caressed the gibbous moon. Chill as the void between veiled stars The howling Wurm in hoary vesture The with'ring world did wreath, As the reaper o'er the moribund His frigid pall would drape. Huddled in earth 'round Promethean tears The pastel light illumed pale faces Of Man fallen benighted. They sought hope And severance from the cold Through shrieking, scathing, star-blown winds Long was the path To a hallowed sell of dying leaves A vestige of green seasons With what rites, ghastly they danced As moths fluttering towards flames. Shadows formed and crept from their mouths, And drew them From the solitude of the wood to the more dreadful solitude of heart With tongues of honeyed thorns They awoke me. Leprous mouths of dwindling faith They invoked me. Ten thousand winters forlorn, shrouded in gray, the heavens shone for those who wrought my decay. Carving their hopes in my flesh The Wurm collapsed into my marrow By my blood the season was bought... Old memories as myriad bloated corpses Rising on putrescent tides Of some loathsome sea, But like the sea, they recede.
3.
Only one with the glimmer of dawn A star ascending from the depths Once with trembling hand, and unwav'ring gaze A singular bloom I beheld, of beauteous sorrow. Innocent of her shining, golden blaze- "I am withered, waning ev'ry morrow." "Blossom, where there be day, see thou only night?" She shone as a gem In whose gleaming facets I glimpsed the sun of a summer I had never seen. "Wherefore flower thou here? The hour grows late, and frost Already caresses the heath. Should not ye have danced In long days afore?" "I beg thee remain And stay by my side; The winter is long And I am afraid to die." She stirred my heart, which so long had been A casket, empty, of rotten wood carven. To wander alone the asphodel vale I could not her forsake. Wreathed in her scent The cold fain would claim But close by her side In rapture I remained. Days as golden dust passed. April's sunset approached at last I achingly drew away Once more to meet my fate. A bid farewell, I looked in her eyes, "When ash and oak in amber shine, To bask in your radiance I shall come again."
4.
Lamentations 11:41
To her I return The one I adore Of whom in long and silent yearning A mere season, eternal seeming I lay dead but dreaming The night is a tapestry overhead; Through forests and fields, Loping in shafts of starlight. There- Just beyond the pathway's bend... In her stead a stone of sculptured ivy stands. Numb. My fingers trace the scars: 'Herself she lay in blissful state Beyond the gate of slumber to wait Until in sunlight again we meet we shall forever weep. She leaves us bereaved.' Plucked and laid upon this grave, pedals bruised and damp with rain Of noisome tears that spread and stain The lingering scent of fair-flowered grace. Wilted; Dead; Amaranth face. The sun has left me I am empty Bleeding black soil Would that moon had sooner raised Me from perennial fleshborne bane... Clutched to my breast, her florid remains... I will mourn this day. The night has never looked so bleak.
5.
Dolour 03:19
Sunless clouds above ripen vast, And let fall their fruit, crystalline, like ash; Ash that slowly drifting from fields of my heart burning drapes all the heath in pallid sheen. The weight of every moment becomes suffocating. Were it better to have never known That a star once brightly shone And roam perdition's forsaken garden Beneath the moon alone? I left my heart on stone Traced in snow. In remembrance of her dulcet voice I would paint her epitaph across the sky.
6.
Is mine the hand that blights the orchard? Or mine breath born of nighted December; the death that blooms in starless aether? Shorn from the sublime, Beyond the thrall of hope; Am I bound to infinite solitude and suffering- not of the body, But of the spirit? A breeze fraught with tainted omen rouses me from the depths of woe. A mutter of marbled limbs Bestirs the Wurm within my breast. The Eastern eye peers with sickly fire Revealing wretched faces four, Bent and bearing through the grey Another corpse, this cairn to join. My visage twisting theirs in fright They turn in vain towards morning light My hand I cannot, will not, stay The crows shall feast this sordid day. ... Musing on these silent streams In patterns pouring from the deed As if they would for me portend, Though cowled in forgotten tongue. Black wings fold o'er tattered throats; I see the answer in their descent, In their rustling, their rending of flesh To bring this revenance to an end. Ten thousand deaths on me bestowed Shall be repaid in likened fold, A chalice filled for thee and thine- This world to drown in draught of white.
7.
This will all pass away One hundred years I watch Buds wither to husks Aching for the sun, but they are held fast, frozen in skeletal hands And nests lay empty. Crawling through cold days No mirth for Men; no harvest to succour; despairing, souls flee before the blaze... Death reflected in the Hunter's moon Drapes crimson light on mountains Cloaked in pine Crouched in shadows beneath the eaves, No more the lamb in wolfen maw, I am waiting. They will come Red eyed and frothing They will come A Shadow looming behind. Beyond the horizon gathered In lifeless oaken glades; He winds his horn wild, The hounds, baleful, howl. With the voice of the gale He calls the Hunt's advent; Through stormlit skies They swiftly ride Bellowing of doom to come. Oh, it will come, but it shall not be mine- doom of another kind. This will all pass away. The Wurmwinds blow as ne'er before The earth in ragged gasps heaving The ghostly Hunt through sheets of white churning Drawing ever nearer... The howling cold so cosmic grows That even shades succumb The inexorable tide of the dreaded Hunt Slows to a crawl, straining against time The earth exhales her final breath And they dissipate The last stench of mankind is washed away in the snow The Anthropocene throne crumbles Let the dead earth fold me into her breast As these wilted pedals I've held clasped to mine Oh let me sleep, let me fade away And never return, I am weary of this world. Mine has been a tale of desolations, Putrescent tides of a loathsome sea But at last, like the sea, I recede.

about

Drawing from blackened depths of death and doom, Dreichmere returns to expand on the foundations laid down in 2015’s Despair the Withered Shadows with an immersive sound that writhes and shifts through a bleak wilderness of melodic and dissonant passages beneath a sunless atmosphere.

The Fruit of Barren Fields is a concept album that weaves a desolate tale across ten-thousand winters of solitude and despair. With cavernous gutterals, howling shrieks, and reverb-drenched whispers the narrative of the 'Pfingstl' unfolds- a forest-spirit figure of ancient Whitsuntide ritual, reimagined as a creature summoned by man to bring about the end of the Wurmian ice age, and doomed to be reborn from the earth each year in the autumn and sacrificed once again to ensure the coming of spring. At last escaping his hunters, the world is consumed by winter, allowing him to truly die at last.

For fans of Opeth, Katatonia, Agalloch, My Dying Bride, and Ved Buens Ende.

credits

released May 31, 2020

Dustin Matthews: All music and mixing
Guest vocals on "As Golden Dust" by Sara Borgström
Mastered by Mike Watts

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Dreichmere Grand Rapids, Michigan

Dreichmere melds textures of dissonance and melody to craft long-form melancholic tracks that are both atmospheric and progressive. Hailing from Grand Rapids, MI, Dreichmere was originally formed under the name Dräugr in 2012.

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