Photo by Jolie M-A
In May of 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and everyone in the Pacific Northwest was touched by its ash, its destructiveness, and its story, a shared experience that became an ash souvenir.
Taking that into account, Drowse (Kyle Bates) and Ragana (Maria and Noel) conceived their new collaborative album Ash Souvenir from a shared sense of grief and collective memory rooted in the Pacific Northwest. Originally commissioned by and premiered at the 2024 edition of Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, the album was recorded afterwards at Unknown studio in Anacortes, Washington.
Ash Souvenir confronts grief. During the writing process, Maria and Kyle were both in a painful, transitional period, moving back to the Pacific Northwest to be closer to struggling loved ones. This return home and the emotions it stirred echoed in Noel’s own inherited history. Their grandmother escaped occupied Latvia in the 1940s and began a new life in the United States, eventually spending her final 25 years in a hand-built log cabin deep in the woods outside Shelton, Washington. Surrounded by fir and aspen, she lived in quiet self-reliance, her days shaped by isolation and resilience.
Today, an excerpt from the sprawling album opener “In Eternal Woods Pts. 1-3” premieres. Ragana’s Noel says the song is about “…loss and memory and love. It’s about sacred places and benevolent ancestors. It’s me standing in the sunlit woods surrounding my Grandma Rasma’s rural Washington cabin, feeling her spirit in everything. My childhood summers were spent in my Grandma’s magical presence, listening to her stories, hunting for chanterelles, singing Latvian folk songs, and playing in the forest. My grandma and her family fled Latvia after the second Soviet occupation of World War 2; despite everything she endured, she was always looking to the future with hope, but she made sure to teach my sister and I about the past, made sure we had a connection to our culture and ancestors. She passed away in 2023 after suffering with dementia for ten years; it was my first experience losing someone bit by bit, helpless against the tide of time sweeping away the person I knew, but still able to share love, to hold her hand and sing to her the way she once sang to me. Incorporating audio clips from old home videos, a verse of Latvian folk poetry known as a Daina, and a prayer for her journey into the next world, with this 4 part song I hoped to express even a fragment of my infinite love for her, and my gratitude for everything she was and everything she taught me.”
Ash Souvenir combines Ragana’s heavy, emotionally charged metal with Drowse’s textural approach to sound. Across four long-form pieces, the trio’s voices and instruments move between stark intimacy and overwhelming intensity, culminating in a collective refrain: “there is nothing to lose.”
Ragana have carved their niche as pioneers of the Pacific Northwestern queer black metal scene. They have released five albums since their formation in 2012, with 2023’s Desolation’s Flower as their first for The Flenser. Kyle Bates specializes in moody, glacial drone as Drowse, a vision that has spanned across five albums since beginning the project in 2018. His most recent, Wane into It came out in 2022 on The Flenser, followed by a split LP in 2023 with Portland-based experimentalist Amulets.
This new collaboration is a sublime experience, conjuring both the power of a devastating eruption and the eerie stillness that lingers in its wake, ashen memories drifting through night air before rejoining the earth. Pre-order Ash Souvenir here and stay tuned for more information.
