Forgotten Woods demo 1 from '93. Nothing more than enjoyable really. This is basically a mixture of slower Hellhammer plagiarism, old Darkthrone influence, and a filling of aharmonic/boring riffs. The production is pretty killer actually, and perhaps saves the album from being much worse. The first track is quite long, and follows the same pattern of slow, fast, slow, fast, etc, so manipulated by Darkthrone, et all. Guitars are like those on United Aryan Evil, crunchy, and kind of thick. I've always loved that sound, but I have never been able to explain why! The end gets rather slow and emotional, repeating a solemn guitar lines for a minute or so.

Track two starts out slow, reminiscent again of "Under a Funeral Moon's" slower tracks. It is an instrumental. The next song is a forty second or so song with around two repetitions of a guitar line... I don't know that the hell this is doing just laying around. From here I think you know what to expect. Of course any band coming up in the same time as Darkthrone, and furthermore from Norway, is going to have a great influence to follow. Perhaps holding that against a band is too much... perhaps not. I always believe that creativity can flourish anywhere, in any environment, regardless or your peers and individuals who surround you. But again, a band like Darkthrone, with their utterly new style, would be hard not to idolize and even blatantly copy. This demo is hence somewhat hard to judge. The Darkthrone influence is more than clear, but works well... great.

To recap; we have here a good and solid demo tape from the early scene. Being from Norway, the influence from those bands is overly apparent, be that as it may. Some songs are well crafted and thoroughly enjoyable (one), some are shit and have no purpose whatsoever (3). There are aspects of the tape which evolve a good atmosphere, and some which do nothing for the listener. Your call...!

© 2002 orodruin