Valance Drakes - Hate Devours Its Host (2023)

Four years lay between An Angel In Alliance With Falsehood and Hate Devours Its Host, Valance Drakes’s brand new full-length for Amek Collective. This deeply personal record sets the producer on yet another path of narrative-driven musical alchemy. Without a doubt, Hate Devours Its Host is Valance Drakes’ most atmospheric work to date. Multilayered ambient soundscapes and spiraling melodic debris are used not as a backdrop but as the backbone of the record. The producer's signature intricate rhythmic structures, subterranean basslines, and hypnotizing sample manipulation are entangled in this drifting sonic environment. All these elements become an inseparable and emotionally intense whole.

We watched this album grow and unfold. As with all things Valance Drakes, the music in Hate Devours Its Host seems that it can be experienced in a breath but truly grasping everything that lies within requires patience and attention to detail. All elements in Hate Devours Its Host are carefully considered, meticulously organized, and purposeful. This full-length is another showcase not just of Drakes' sound design and compositional craftsmanship but an honest representation of life as beautiful or punishing as it can get.