Forest of the Impaled

…that made me burn my zine editor cap in ’97.

I’m not going to try to unravel the Absu/Dolmen web this band seems to be stuck to, mainly because Forest of the Impaled had wandered out of the woods a few years after both bands were already making/not making a name for themselves, so the demo probably has little to do with either group, and frankly, there are better things to worry about.

Well, according to the band this is their variety of black metal, but it’s actually rather lukewarm, uninspired death metal that strolls confidently around repetition as if it were the best thing since the windmill. Shackled to the mill are mostly slow, unintriguing rhythms, rhythms so used to the rotation they’ve fallen asleep. Songs spill into each other like a pen slowly leaking onto a desk in a boring math class, but unlike the stain that’ll be there for awhile, you’ll probably forget about these songs before the bell rings. The vocalist is jagged, yet indistinct with short bull snorts, seemingly his complete range. The production comes from somewhere in the basement.

The cover is a crudely-drawn piece of paper that’s been folded wrong, so it’s upside down when the cassette opens the right way, but for some real excitement keep the art right side up and open it from the left. It’s probably the most adventurous thing having to do with this tape.

Luckily, the demo crawls by pretty quickly, and since you’ll easily lose interest in what’s (not) going on, it goes by even faster.