Helvetic War

The record company of Forsth, Last Episode, went insolvent. In case you wish to know how this could happen, it might be a good idea to insert this disc into the CD player. It does not take a lot of time to understand why albums such as "Helvetic War" did not become a megaseller. They were just not good enough to inspire a large number of black metal maniacs, not to mention the critics. Incoherent song structures were combined with endless keyboard melodies. If you now think that this does not sound very interesting, you´d be right.

I have no doubt that the Swiss four-piece worked ambitiously to compose impressive tunes, but melodic black metal is not based on ill-defined melodic directions. An enormous amount of useless breaks is not helping either. There are some good approaches, but they are not implemented consistently. I must therefore unfortunately say that the band does not deliver any outstanding songs. The pieces just babble along. What is even worse, they suffer from the fuzzy production. The muddy guitars and the rumbling drums would have deserved a better mixing but they are mercilessly sidelined by the pesky keyboard and the hoarse cawing of the lead singer. This would not have been too serious if the musicians would have written pretty good pieces to compensate these production flaws as best as possible. I regret that this has not been the case.

Fairly aggressive eruptions lose their power due to the fact that they get interrupted by slack melodic sequences. As a result, the album lacks of memorable parts. Everything blurs into each others and the songs all sound the same. Gloomy or thrilling riffs are almost completely missing. An atmosphere of war - remember the martial album title - does not arise. Much more is it the case that you feel like being at a medieval market. This might be suitable in a certain way due to the stylish cover and the topic of the lyrics which take you on a journey through time (the Helvetic War took place in 1291). Nevertheless, this musical approach quickly loses its appeal. One reason for this is certainly the invariable style of the so-called singer who maltreats his vocal chords and our auditory canals in an almost painful way. His technical capabilities are very limited. Unfortunately, some spoken words parts are also not helpful.

This is definitely not the worst black metal album of all times. For example, it does not lack of musical enthusiasm. But due to the vast number of better outputs, it has to be said aloud that life is too short to listen to mediocre full-lengths such as "Helvetic War". The same applies for creating undistinguished pieces. Forsth obviously had similar thoughts. Consequently, they did not release a third album and perhaps that was just as well.

After a terrible debut from this sappy Swiss black metal circus act. We get a deeper dive into the pointless realm of bandom. There is no rhyme or reason to this group's schemes. Except a one focused attention at becoming scenesters in the mid to late nineties heightening black metal world. Forsth's Helvetic War is Emperor worship all the same as their debut from the previous year. Having squawking, generic crow like vocals and their keyboards are a close emulation. The production has changed slightly with the drums becoming more evident and full sounding, as well as a more evened sound with the other instruments. However, Forsth's production wasn't the major hurting point. It was their one set ideology.

The keyboards are still quite dominating and haven't changed a tune compared to their previous album. We get simplistic melodies, that might of worked better if blended into the background more, or probably not played at all. Instead we get them full blast and non-stop at points. He uses quite a lot of keyboard sounding organs and horn like emulated keys. In a back and forth fashion, "ehhhn, ahhhh, ehhhn, ahhhn, uhhhhh." The guitars are still quite buried into the background. But have a less distorted sound to them compared to the previous album. We get simple chords played slow, and sometimes with a little bit of palm mutes thrown in. The other side plays fast tremolo picked meshed chords with a faint bit of audibility. Sometimes the guitars are playing the exact melody as the keyboards are. Also there are a few solos added to bits and pieces of songs, which has the volume raised and gives a focused attention. The bass guitar is different on this album, recorded with a louder and more present sound compared to the guitars. For the most part the vocals are identical as the previous higher pitched duck like squawks. But on some songs we get the occasional clean vocal line thrown in and then back to Donald putting on another episode.

So far I've described Helvetic War, but I can't find anything interesting about this album to write about. It doesn't offer anything that hasn't been done, and takes on past undesired concepts. Forsth still misses the point of dark or even evil concepts. Whatever they were going for, they probably don't even know. Maybe if their favorite bm superstars could give a stern speech from the posters they had on their walls. As if they never existed, we would be now saying, "Forsth, who?" They create their own imitation of certain front running bands that out did them as well as out existed them. However, the most embarrassing thing Forsth could have done was to make two music videos around when this album came out, with songs from the previous album. They show the band playing in the woods, drum set, keyboard stand, and wire-free guitars and all. With that, I don't entirely blame previous bands for leading Forsth up to not only the video, but this album which continues on in the same fashion as the last. I blame Forsth for upkeeping the bad aesthetics and taking the worst attributes of the previous bands, and passing them off as their own. In my opinion, they created a dated and dust piled album.