Shadowy Ukrainian black metal poets Drudkh have got a busy year ahead of them (though they'll still probably never do an interview); more's the pity, for as we've discussed in the past, the band's ties to right-wing countrymen Hate Forest and Astrofaes have cast doubts upon their own allegedly extreme political views.

This particular cover song originally appeared on 2010's Slavonic Chronicles but has a new lease on life thanks to a new Season of Mist compilation, Eastern Frontier in Flames, that packages a collection of rare material . Whereas the original is steeped in Master's Hammer's trademark Czech strangeness (replete with scratchy strings and ghostly choir), Drudkh's version has been made very much their own. The death-inspired lyrical content is more visceral than Drudkh's customary folklore-and-forests rhetoric, and perhaps inspired by those corporeal visions, they take a more macabre approach. It's darker, more on edge, and far more foreboding, with a spit of jazz in the jumpy drumming and vocalist Thurios' harsh rasp overpowering the mournful chords beneath.