I’m the type of music listener that lives off the high of finding new music, always on the hunt for something that will lay my expectations to waste. This musically inquisitive inner drive has led me in nearly every general direction you could imagine, yet despite that I am only scratching the surface with the sheer volume of music out there and being released on a weekly basis; the hunt will never end and that is something I am perfectly okay with! That desire to keep finding new tunes is what led me to Everything Is Noise and that only made things better (or worse, depends on how you look at it).
Being able to surround myself with like-minded individuals over the past four years has allowed for me to continue expanding my taste and finding albums/artists that I’d have almost zero hope of finding on my own, so for that I am eternally grateful. All that being said, I want to share with you an artist today that I discovered purely because of my connections through the site. Had I never come on board, I doubt I’d have ever found this particular artist, as a fellow writer on the site (you know who you are) who precisely knows the type of stuff I like more than I do myself found this and shared with me knowing it’d be something tailor-made for me and many readers of our site.
Behold Datûra, a progressive/post metal band out of Warsaw, Poland. It is a guarantee that this name is novel to just about everyone reading this (it certainly was to me), as they have only just released their debut album, Obsidian. From the moment I got that message saying ‘check this out homie’ with a Bandcamp link to this very album, I just pressed play and got sucked into a dark, twisted atmospheric journey that I couldn’t pry myself from. After listening through the album and wanting to learn more about the band, I realized that they had barely 500 listeners on Spotify and thought to myself how criminal that was. Datûra’s Obsidian is an album that needs to be heard by the prog/post metal communities and that is why I am here talking about them today.
Upon first listen, it was inherently obvious that Datûra are something special, and they’re just getting started career-wise. The way these winding compositions unfold with such grace while draped in a thick layer of psychedelic/folk undertones makes for an exquisite post metal experience. With the sheer quality of the music and my desire to spread the good word on Datûra, I inquired with the band about everyone’s musical background, any side projects, and how the band came to be. Maja Rutkowska (vocals) and Albert Stąpór (lead guitarist) generously gave their time and insight on band as a whole. Here is what Maja and Albert had to say on the matter:
Maja: ‘To be honest, we don’t really have a big background when it comes to previous projects. Our bassist, Robert, is probably the most experienced of us as he had played in a few post-rock bands before he met us. Krzysiek, our rhythm guitarist, played in one rock band which he left to join us, and Albert was a session musician in a band called Essex just before Datûra was born. Marcin, our drummer, played in some funky band, but it didn’t really go any further than that. I had zero experience myself when it comes to playing in bands. I only started making my own music a few years before we formed Datûra and it was something I did just for myself. To be honest, I had always wanted to have my own band, probably since I was 7. Hard to imagine that it took me more than two decades to find one!
‘As for how the band came together, Albert was looking for a vocalist and posted an ad on one a local Facebook music group. I replied and it turned out that our music compatibility was quite high. We started to compose the first songs and then we found the rest of the band. During rehearsals, the songs shaped up a bit more and after a year and a half we were ready to record our first mini-album called Datûra. At that time, we already had enough material to release two albums, but we decided to start with an EP to see what it’s like; it was everyone’s first physical release ever. We had no idea about running an album promotion whatsoever, plus some of us had zero experience in performing on stage. The EP and the first few concerts worked like a warm-up and gave us a possibility to learn from mistakes. After a few club gigs we managed to appear at Summer Dying Loud festival, which gave us a bigger reach. A year later we were ready to release a full-length – Obsidian. We devoted a lot of time and effort to create this album.’
Albert: ‘I can say that the biggest part of my inspiration to start this band was my ‘poor’ mental state at the end of 2019. It caused me to approach writing music in a much different way than I used to. That honestly may be a common story among many musicians in our genre; to be inspired by things happening in their minds that they cannot process.’
Visually, Obsidian’s album artwork instantly drew me in with the color palette (I have a thing for the color purple – the person who sent me the album knows this) and the circular, etched pattern that indicates some sort of unexplained cyclical entity. Now that I think about it, a lot of my favorite albums have this circular theme going on, either directly in the artwork or subtlety in the music itself. So simply seeing the album artwork upon opening the Bandcamp link prior to even listening to any of their music, I could already tell it was going to be special. After taking special interest in the visual aspect, I had to ask about the meaning/inspiration about the art, so here is Maja’s explanation:
‘The album cover depicts circles consisting of four elements – Earth, Water, Air and Fire; the inner circle is the iris, the black circle is the pupil (and its blackness also refers to an obsidian mirror) and the spot in the middle is, of course, the Moon. The whole picture refers to an experience with moon-gazing and shadow work, generally speaking. The rest is told in the song “Obsidian”. The moon topic appears again in “To the One Who Runs at Night”, where its special connection with the human mind is highlighted.
‘It took us a lot of time to come up with the right images for the cover and for the booklet. My friend, Basia Żach, is the author of all the drawings and we chose her because of her unique style. A funny thing is that when Basia started to draw the pictures for Obsidian during her stay in Mexico, she started experiencing some amazing stories and meeting extraordinary people. When I explained to her what I wanted to include in the images, she was able to connect with my ideas even stronger than before, as if the events she had experienced gave her some kind of insight into the lyrics and the things I wanted to say in the album.’
While purple may be just a color, Obsidian elicits such vivid visualizations in the mysteriously warm soundscapes that are very ‘purple-like’ in musical nature. The color itself always gives off a hauntingly beautiful sort of mood and the music here complements it perfectly.
The opening track, “Venom”, serves as a masterful encapsulation of the record as a whole. It showcases the band’s tangible chemistry and ability to craft such dynamic soundscapes and compositions that are unpredictable in how they unravel. Color me surprised when I found out from Maja that the band had minimal experience doing ‘band things’ prior to Datûra, as it genuinely sounds like a group of seasoned veterans came together as if it was destiny to write an album of this caliber (I still don’t believe you Maja, but I am taking your word for it! hehe).
While “Venom” is a stellar track in itself, the rest of the album has plenty of special moments healthily sprinkled throughout. “We Lived Afloat” features a really juicy, gallop-y riff that has instantly integrated itself into the collection of random tapping rhythms my fingers do at the most inappropriate of times. I cannot forget to mention that the outro to this particular track is absolutely sublime. The punchiness of the bass guitar makes this one (along with the sinister intro to “Ether”) extra beefy and stick that much more in the back of my mind. My personal favorite track is “The Valley”, as it takes you on a wild musical journey in its seven-minute runtime. The song opens with earthy acoustic tones that feel ritualistic, then builds into a goosebump-inducing ambient section reminiscent of the Shadow Temple’s theme in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, all before culminating into a powerful full band finale.
While I brought up the subliminal meaning of the album artwork earlier, you’d imagine that the lyrics would revolve around a similar concept or subtle symbolism, and you would be correct! Maja did hint towards this while talking about the artwork, but she had this to say in regard to the lyrics themselves:
‘I could go on and on about all the symbolism I tried to incorporate in the lyrics. To keep it short, the length and complexity of the compositions enabled me to write lyrics in the form of stories that I collected in my journals. All of the lyrics talk about my visions, dreams, ideas and things I’ve experienced. It is worth mentioning that I prioritize the sound and the rhythm, so the actual words appear as the last step in composing vocals. A vague, imagery language is used as a tool for vocal expression, and only later do I come up with words that hold a specific meaning to fit a rhythm, the ones that are suitable for the song and closely resemble the made-up language. In this process you may realize that the meaning had always been there, but you just needed to decipher it.’
With Obsidian still being fresh in its release to the world, Datûra are going on a run of Fall-Winter shows to continue to promote the album and themselves as a band. Albert had this to say regarding their live shows and music in general:
‘At this point, I think we have over 20 shows behind us. It doesn’t make us a super experienced band yet, but we feel more and more confident with our live shows. We always do some rehearsals before the show. What’s worth mentioning is that we are constantly improving the live versions of our songs, including micro changes in composition, so it is worth seeing us live more than one time (heh). Even if we know that nobody is going to catch that one new accent we’ve added to the song live, it makes us happy to make such tweaks even after release.’
To wrap things up, I had asked Maja and Albert what they want to get out of Datûra in the long run, as well as if they had any ideas for new music already starting to brew.
Maja: ‘Personally speaking, I want the band to compose more and create even more surprising mixtures of music styles. I hope we will be able to record new songs quite quickly without any turbulence. We also hope to play at some bigger festivals, if we get invited. As for new music, I think it’s tough to predict anything at this point still being so fresh off of Obsidian. I hope the future music will naturally come out of us, out of a need for self-expression as with our debut.’
Albert: ‘In the long term, we just want keep writing the best music we can and play live. To me, the live performance is the place where I feel our music really resonates with our audience. The organic and interactive aspect of it makes me twice as satisfied compared to just releasing something on streaming services. About possible new music, we have some loose drafts going on, but it’s too early to say anything about the future, final shape of it. I don’t think that we’ve exploited the musical style of Obsidian so it’s possible that our future material will be orbiting around this style but with even broader horizons, just to avoid repeating ourselves. No musician wants to record the same album twice…’
Datûra is:
Maja Rutkowska – Vocals
Albert Stąpór – Lead Guitar
Krzysztof Kolaj – Rhythm Guitar
Robert Gancarczyk – Bass / Synthesizers
Marcin Bystrzycki – Drums
If you made it this far, I hope you found a new band to obsess over as I have (special shout out to he-who-shall-remain-unnamed-but-rhymes-with-Bobert for sending this band to me in the first place). Let’s blow up their socials as they’re incredibly deserving of it (Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp).
Photo credit: Beata Wiśniowska
