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. Ash Souvenir is the collaborative album by Drowse (Kyle Bates) and Ragana (Maria and Noel), conceived in a shared sense of grief and collective memory rooted in the Pacific Northwest.
Ash Souvenir was originally commissioned by and premiered at the 2024 edition of Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. Afterwards, the trio recorded the album at the legendary 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.
The album 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.”
Ash Souvenir 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.
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.
