Ragana and Drowse team up to give us a more gray and autumnal take on blackgaze on the excellent Ash Souvenir.
Release date: November 14, 2025 | The Flenser | Facebook: Ragana/Drowse | Instagram: Ragana/Drowse | Bandcamp
Souvenirs are special: unlike so many things we buy, a souvenir can carry a memory with it. It is meant to, as if a kind of spiritual intention was placed on the shirt or trinket or whatever that, upon touching, the item unlocks a more visceral remembrance of places, people, and time. For people in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in 1980, a different kind of souvenir rained from the sky, pieces of earth and life eviscerated through the explosion and flames of Mt. St. Helens as ash, coating skin, inhaled, and left to get reabsorbed into the earth. They called this an Ash Souvenir.
This is the title given to post-black metal duo Ragana and experimental shoegazer Drowse‘s collaboration project. Originally commissioned for a performance at Roadburn Festival in 2024, the trio went to the studio to record it afterwards, and now Ash Souvenir can be all of ours. I have been a fan of Ragana for a few years now, first hearing them on their 2018 split with Thou, Let Our Names Be Forgotten. I visited some of their earlier work and have followed them since, with 2023’s Desolation’s Flower being among my favorite ten albums of that year. Drowse, a solo project by Kyle Bates that fuses drone with acoustic guitars, shoegaze, and whiffs of black metal, is an artist I have been sleeping on, but fits right in with Ragana‘s minimalist yet powerful heaviness.
Across four songs, Ash Souvenir delves deep into grief, both personal and collective, with a distinct reverence and connection to the artists’ homes in the Pacific Northwest. “In Eternal Woods (Pts. 1-3)” spans over 13 minutes, starting with a slow burn of gorgeous guitar work that practically feels like Oregon and Washington, fitting in with the region’s gray skies and flannel aesthetic. One could imagine this playing while driving though a lonely, forested road. When the heaviness kicks in, it is well announced and transfixing. Ragana tend to play their black metal a notch or two slower than most black metal bands, giving their music more room to blossom into emotional crescendos. Drowse‘s guitar work adds even more texture to this by steadily increasing effects and intensity until his voice comes in clean and soft, singing alongside Ragana‘s harsh vocals, ‘the way is open‘, in a climax that provides hope through darkened paths.
Drowse leads on “After Image”, giving a beautiful blackgaze performance as, again, his vocals interlock with Ragana‘s in a moment that feels more authentically like a mix of shoegaze and black metal than anything in the genre tends to sound like, brooding and heavy more than the genre’s typical focus on building glowing crescendos. “In Eternal Woods (Pt. 4)” likewise carries a moody, yet triumphant tone, led by an organ that feels medieval, like an acoustic dungeon synth track, even concluding with lo-fi noise and rainfall. The final track, “Ash Souvenir”, is a stunning conclusion, connecting the themes of the album both musically in its reflective beauty and lyrically through cleanly sung lyrics that culminate in a refrain of, ‘there is nothing to lose‘, again giving hope through memory, the taste of ash on our lips as we finally find the light at the end of that darkened path.
Ash Souvenir is fabulous, though I wish it was longer. This collaboration, like many other Roadburn-inspired albums, brings out the best of both of the artists, especially given that, as a duo and a solo act, coming together adds so much more to their respective sounds. The weight and care that was put into these songs resonates like a distant seismic event, washing over everything in sounds and vibrations that linger long after the din has died down, so much so that this album stands as a memorable artifact for anyone who experiences it. Whether a wound, a fond memory, or some ethereal feeling of both that lingers deep in our emotions, Ash Souvenir is shelf worthy in a way that overshadows trinkets.
