Demonvoid

Forest of Impaled consisted on this record of five Polish guys from Chicago. That’s nothing very unusual, because there is a large Polish community in Chicago, and the city itself was basically built by immigrants from Poland (and few other countries as well).

This record contains nine melodic black metal songs. They seem to be quite long, but the whole record lasts just a bit over half an hour, so it’s just an impression made by the rich arrangements of the songs. The shrieks are deep, near to death growls. Keyboards are used sporadically and usually kept low in the mix. The drums are fast and technical and the bass is hidden in the background. The guitars sound extreme and modern at a time. This is how I would like to see metal of the XXI century - modern, but not new-fangled.

First of all: the guys from Forest of Impaled are highly skilled musicians - and you can hear that. The drums are really crazy at times, some will like it, but I prefer simpler drumming myself… And the broken rhythms in “Wings of Apocalypse” are really crap. The keyboards are okay most of the time I guess, but sometimes they just suck. The vocals, as I said, are very deep and sound just fine that way, but I think they could be more legible… But maybe they’re good the way they are, ‘cause the lyrics aren’t too great. The guitars are sharp and heavy, but also melodic. Man, you can hear, that these guys know what black metal was in the old days - it’s not just blastbeating towards nothingness with guitars buzzing like annoying mosquitoes: they don’t forget where they’re going while they blast their way through, and the guitars are massive and vicious. This album is fast and heavy, but they didn’t forget about the melodies. Well, this is kind of similar to Immortal, and that’s cool, ‘cause Immortal are one of my favorite black metal bands. And now for something completely different: the cover. The front cover of this issue is just terrible, in fact so bad, that I just had to express what I think about it. Oh yeah, and the sound… it’s cold and clear, like a block of ice - and it stays that way even though it gets noisy and messy once in a while. Eh, overall, this is no masterpiece and no new quality in music, but you just can’t get bored while listening to this album - it’s packed with ideas, and a lot is going on in each and every song.

If you’re a black metal maniac, buy this. If not - try it out anyway, I’m not either, and I liked it, maybe you will too. I will definitely buy their second album and support them live if they come to Poland - because they deserve it.