Released in 2017 via An Out Recordings, Ragana’s You Take Nothing is a stark and emotionally charged work that captures the duo’s unique fusion of black metal, doom, and raw vulnerability. Across its six tracks, the album channels grief, rage, and resilience through a sound that is both intimate and immense, balancing ferocity with deep introspection.
The record opens with Spare No Man, setting the tone through slow-building guitars and anguished vocals that erupt into a storm of distortion and catharsis. Ragana’s dynamic interplay between Maria’s guitar and vocals and Coley’s drumming and harmonies is at the core of the album’s power sparse yet commanding, every note feeling purposeful and alive.
Throughout You Take Nothing, songs like Winter’s Light and Inviolate demonstrate the band’s ability to weave beauty and brutality into a seamless whole. The transitions between whispered melody and crashing intensity feel organic, guided more by emotion than structure. The lo-fi production enhances the immediacy of the music, making it sound as though it was captured in a single, impassioned breath.
Lyrically, the album confronts themes of loss, oppression, and personal strength with an unflinching honesty. Rather than despair, Ragana channel pain into solidarity and defiance, offering a vision of empowerment through confrontation. Their sound carries both the intimacy of confession and the force of protest.
You Take Nothing stands as one of Ragana’s most cohesive and affecting works an album that transforms heaviness into empathy and rage into reflection. It is a raw, human record that finds transcendence not in escape, but in facing the weight of existence head-on.
