The title refers to a biblical town of the same name – "a Shangri-La-esque place with an abundance of gold" – and is the valley 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Myrtleford, where they recorded.

Havilah was recorded in April 2008 by the Drones at the mud-brick home of their bass guitarist, Fiona Kitschin, and lead singer, Gareth Liddiard.

[2][3] The music on the album has been described as being influenced by "30 years of left-field rock heroics (the Birthday Party, Sonic Youth, the noisiest bits of Neil Young)"[5] as well as "fellow Aussies Nick Cave and The Triffids' late David McComb"[6] To shake up his lyric writing, Liddiard was reading four books at once, and using internet packages to jumble words and create unimaginable phrases – similar to the labour intensive "cut up" techniques employed by writer William S. Burroughs and singer David Bowie in the pre-Internet era, where they cut up words on paper and jumbled them up:[7] I made a conscious effort to put my head in the sand.

[11] The Age's Patrick Donovan observed, "the band's angry cacophony has partly given way to a cleaner, more upbeat sound with more melody and narrative-based songs...

"[12] Joe Colly of Pitchfork writes that "They're traditional in the way Black Lips are-- straightforward instrumentation, a healthy nod to the past-- but manage to dodge the pitfalls of revisionism with an unusual mixture of brute force, bleak lyrical content, and singer Gareth Liddiard's distinctive caterwaul.

[8] More mixed reviews came from Q who said it was a "little too heavily indebted to fellow Aussies Nick Cave and The Triffids' late David McComb, even if that's not a bad place to be coming form.

"[6] Prefix magazine described it as "thickset blues rock" that "makes for opaque and impenetrable listening" decrying their perceived lack of innovation (in comparison to acts such as Women and Abe Vigoda) and their inability to "wallow in the same gloriously gloomy lows as, say, Come’s Eleven:Eleven or Neil Young's On the Beach" comparing the music to the "mid level depress-o-rock that The Smashing Pumpkins have been peddling on-and-off for the best part of two decades" and criticizing Liddiard's lyrics as "too often uninspired, and seemingly torn from a notebook full of juvenilia that should have been stuffed in the back of a firmly locked closet" despite being "witty" at parts[20] Havilah was one of 12 nominees at the J Awards of 2008 for Album of the Year.