Old Forest opens us its universe again.
Created in 1990 in England, the duo formed by Kobold (drums/vocals/keyboards, Ewigkeit, In the Woods…, Orcrypt, The Bombs of Enduring Freedom…) and Beleth (guitar/bass) releases a demo, an album, and ends in 2001. We have to wait until 2007 for the band to come back, then 2017 for the arrival of Kobro (drums, Chain Collector, In the Woods…, ex-Carpathian Forest, ex-Blood Red Throne, ex-Green Carnation). The band offers us today Mournfall, its sixth album.
Inspired by the art of J.R.R. Tolkien, the band offers a Black Metal with several shades. Some Melodic parts, Symphonic ambiences, and Old School building and Folk Metal influences live into the riffs of Old Forest. The melancholy on Tyrant Spell makes us sink into a haunting universe where howlings and seizing vocals live together on soaring riffs, that swell with unholy energy before the sharp and melodic The Anvils. The song sometimes accelerates, giving to leads an epic basis and an ambience made between blackness and mystical folklore, then the long Despair Is My Name enters. The composition shrouds us into a weighing screed of melancholy, ornate by seizing and sad clean vocals, picking into a heady DSBM, then Red Sky in Mourning offers an ambient break into this blackness with Folk and Swedish influences.
The heavy My Haunting Vision comes next with this heady dissonance, this violent blackness and this aggressive melodicity, supported by mystical backing vocals and howlings. The song is both catchy and weighing, like Solitude Apocalypse, a song of which title speaks for itself, offering an overwhelming sadness and a penetrating slowness that only increases intensity until Shadow Immemorial. The song counts a lot on those epic leads, that contrast with the solid and slow rhythmic where the vocalist’s howlings alight, sometimes accompanied by backing vocals before a brutal final part. A Bitter End comes to remind the dissonant Folk/Black influences before the album ends.
But the band also offers us the four tracks of their Sussex Hell Hound 2001 demo they released last year. Four songs of an Old School Melodic Black Metal mixed with this unhealthy mind. Whether The Raven Look On picks into black melodies, Black Alchemist offers a rain of abrasive melodies. Sussex Hell Hound unveils a mysterious groove and piercing harmonics, then Serpent & Saint closes the album with a strange and oppressive veil, offering whispers and some echoes to haunt us.
Old Forest’s evolution is obvious. Between this 2001 Black/Folk and Mournfall’s Ambient Black Metal from 2021, the influences increase. The album has to be listened as a single piece to understand this progression.
90/100