Review: FORGOTTEN WOODS “As The Wolves Gather” + “Sjel Av Natten”

FORGOTTEN WOODS “As The Wolves Gather” + “Sjel Av Natten”
ATMF

Here we have another veterans of Norwegian scene. And here the most or maybe even all of you who don’t know this band thought: “Norway = Black Metal”. Well, in this case you was absolutely right! After the name you also probably guessed that we have here to do with this more climatic kind of Black Metal. Well, I didn’t use word ‘atmospheric’ here especially.

Ok, for those of you who don’t know the band (and it’s very possible that there’s many of you because the last release saw darkness of the night ten years ago) I’ll present it shortly. FORGOTTEN WOODS was formed in 1991 by residents of two small Norwegian towns (even if we’ll sum inhabitants of both of them their number will be less than 8.000): Etne and Ølen. There were few changes of line-up and it was especially about position of vocalist. During sixteen years of existence they released four demos, EP, three albums, boxed set and two first demos on CD in 2007. Here we have compilation of their two earlier works, too. “As the Wolf Gather” was their debut full-length from 1994 and “Sjel av Natten” (Soul of the Night) is 1995 EP. Both stuffs had good response in Black Metal world especially. And let’s be honest: they still sound fresh and surely enclose more interesting music than some new bands create.

Of course that’s still pure Black Metal and it means that people who don’t like this sub-genre of Metal will say that it’s boring. Well, that’s only a question of musical taste and it’s nothing to discuss – it’d be the same nonsense like try to persuade somebody who like beer a lot that it tastes crappy. However, the fact is that music of these four Norwegians is as on music which they play variable and there’re some own ideas. Riffs aren’t maybe complicated, but they change quite often, contrary to some mostly projects which think that to play Black Metal is about using maximum three riffs played in the same key during whole album. We have here melody and even harmony as well. Bass is often well hearable and enjoy us with its pulsing which sometimes we could call little solos. Drumming is various too. There’s a lot of cymbals, shorter or longer passages. Generally it’s very easy to hear influences of several styles of music. It’s about all instruments. One of the songs begins in the way which I can connote only with Punk Rock. Vocals isn’t anything new or untypical for Black Metal. They are rather screechy, but from time to time they become more like desperate scream.

I’m sure that all Black Metal in middle-slow and sometimes even slow tempo fans shout grab this stuff as well! But if you like when songs or even bands are like two peas in a pod (and think that real Black Metal should look just like that) then it’s definitely not for you. It isn’t any masterpiece maybe, but surely it’s piece of good, interesting music.