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The Forsaken > Manifest of Hate > Reviews
The Forsaken - Manifest of Hate

One hit wonder - 50%

Commander Octopus, January 30th, 2023
Written based on this version: 2001, CD, Century Media Records

The title of this review is of course not accurate. There was no hit for these guys in that sense, and even less so a wonder. But The Forsaken's Manifest of Hate is symptomatic of a lot what was going on in the late 90's entering the new millennium. Before the days of streaming services, it was easy enough for a company such as Century Media to put a blizzard of a metal song at the top of a new release and then stack up the rest of the playing length with watered out versions of whatever was en vogue for the time being. Old Man's Child's The Pagan Prosperity is an excellent example of this phenomenon, ironically released through the same label.

So for a poor kid like me, you'd have another disc to cram into the bulging collection and a burning hole in your pocket, so that CD better live up to it's promises when you slipped it in and pressed play. I remember being disappointed in Manifest of Hate, but when revisiting it, I am actually more charmed by it now than I was back then. Let's start with the good parts, the absolute hit of the album: opener Hate Seers is a song I'd gladly add to any playlist. Alright, so The Forsaken was sold as death/thrash, and the song opens with a rather spastic thrash riff in the vein of Testament. But it soon plunges into a roaring inferno of Morbid Angelesque grandiosity, Covenant and Dominant era. Rapture comes to mind. This rather American take on death metal is tastefully spiced up with dashes of Swedish West Coast melodies, but not too much as to ruin the brutality. Anders Sjöholm rips through the texture with infernal roars, not unlike David Vincent from those days. There are blast beasts and generous double pedal work. It sounds as though Nicke Grabowski is hitting the drums not only fast, but hard! No fucking triggers here. There is even a Cannibal Corpse-oozing stick in the song.

So basically, The Forsaken opens the pressure cooker and adds a bit of everything they like. Fast and furious thrash (this was after all a couple of years after The Haunted, The Crown and Witchery reinvented Swedish thrash metal), Swedish West Coast DM, American Florida death, and a bit of American West Coast groove. And in Hate Seers, it boils together perfectly. Then what the fuck happens?

That was my thought as a kid, but admittedly I can hear more consistency today. What I was most heavily objected to back then was the heavier reliance on Swedish Gothenburg platitudes a la At The Gates, In Flames or Arch Enemy. Slaughter of the Soul, Colony and Stigmata had been released a couple to a few years earlier, so it's fair to say this scene had peaked and was in my opinion in bit of a decline (fans of Soilwork may disagree). Not only do The Forsaken lack the chops for the dual guitar work of the Amott brothers, they also lack the in-your-face directness of songwriting that made Slaughter Of The Soul a timeless, if also detested, classic. I personally like all the albums referenced here, so there is no wonder why I picked this one up in the first place, but the inconsistencies of this album are infuriating. It's hard to say whether there were huge egos in the band pulling in different directions and they somehow compromised to make everyone happy, or if Century Media wanted to scoop up whatever was left on the plate with a piece of loaf from yesteryear. Most of the guys, save for Michael Håkansson who later appears in other bands (most notably perhaps The Project Hate MCMXCIX), seem to have plodded on for a few years without any notable success or side projects.

Sjöholm more frequently abandons his exemplary growls for a more generic screech on later songs, something I also disliked back then. The few death'n'roll groovy parts don't do the songs any favors either. And the transport distances of 6/8 towards 2/4 time feel like a stupid waste of time for a beast like Grabowski. Yet still, when I listen to it today, despite the second tier take on early melo-death in a world that wasn't even saturated with it yet, there is a decidedly rougher edge to The Forsaken. And it's when The Forsaken abandon the watered out cossack melodies and go into blitzing angry thrash frenzy, face ripping blast beats and thunderous rolling double pedal carpets that things remain interesting, which fortunately happens a lot. I honestly didn't remember how aggressive and fast this album is at times. Dehumanized Perspective, for example, on and off sounds like something straight out of Glenn Benton-land, and much of what makes Hate Seers such an excellent song splashes all over the remainder of this opus. I can't help to think what would have happened if The Forsaken would have been more inventive and unique with their melodic flavors.

Tägtgren's abysmal treatment of the mastering has been mentioned in the earlier critique, and I can only agree, this album has not been properly mixed and mastered. For good or bad. A more polished production could have further highlighted the dull parts and the shameless aping after what had already been done much better by other bands, but of course, the bad production certainly doesn't serve the band. Perhaps, again, it's the record label's fault? The studio budget might have been insufficient, and the guys simply ran out of time? Whatever the case, the album sounds unfinished.

So after revisiting this flawed yet charming debut of band with a peculiar vision, I still have so many questions. Mainly, what factors contributed to a band capable of writing something so infernally solid as Hate Seers threw the rest of it into such disorder?

They need smiths, even in the Abyss. - 36%

MacMoney, March 12th, 2007

Is anyone surprised if I say that Manifest of Hate sounds like At The Gates? If you are, you shouldn't be. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if At The Gates were still together and recording, they would sound like this. Anders SJöholm's screehing is a dead ringer for Tomas Lindberg although his vocals are mixed in the back. The verses are made with the same barebones formula as all of Slaughter of the Soul: simplistic drumming with no fills, a clear, thrashy riff and the screeches over it.

Fortunately The Forsaken have decided to improve on Slaughter of the Soul so Manifest of Hate doesn't end up being just a rehash of the old and no one could bear to listen to Blinded by Fear stretched to five minutes. They've added more than a dash of actual, somewhat technical Swedish death metal. These parts usually alternate with the At The Gates-formula creating a jumble that doesn't work. Some of the changes are just too abrupt and awkward to give a sense of single entity and the gothenburg riffs sound incredibly weak in comparison. To mix things up a little more, these death metal parts sometimes feature thrashy riffs reminiscent of early Morbid Angel. It seems that the band wasn't sure what they wanted to write, gothenburg or death metal. They were just writing riffs and combining them together to cool-sounding entities which might or might not work. At least they didn't include any melodic breaks to bog down the songs even more. Songs like Soulshade and Betrayal within Individuals show that if the band had done their homework, this album could have been salvaged to perhaps an EP. These tracks aren't all the way good, but they include enough working parts that a handful of worthy songs could have been worked out.

What ultimately ruins the album is the production, courtesy of the Abyss studios and Tommy Tägtgren. That should tell you how every instrument sounds, generic as all hell. Guitars lack crunch and power, they only include gloss. The vocal effects are the ones you have heard on a thousand other albums. The drums are as plain as they can be and the bass is barely audible except when brought to the forefront which happens perhaps twice. A lot on the album could've been saved with more powerful guitars. The At The Gates-riffs demand crunch, not slick. They are weak and dull enough on their own. The death metal parts would've also benefited from a dirtier guitar sound. The vocals vary from a deeper death growl to the Tomas Lindberg-screech. Probably the vocalist didn't have a distinct enough style on his own so the usual effects were applied and his death growl ended up sounding like the vocals of most no-name bands that did their albums at Abyss under Tommy and it is evident after who the screech is modified. One of the most interesting parts on Manifest of Hate is the drumming so it is nice that the drums are clear. However the cymbals sound as lively as clay pots which detracts a lot.

I have a distinct feeling that this album could have been improved a lot if the raw materials had been utilized better but I guess this was just another meal on the table for Tommy Tägtgren and he was just going through the motions when guiding the band during their first proper recording.