Yesterday evening I went for a walk in the woods. Three insects stung me. Why they did that remained their secret. Unfortunately, I can't tell you about any other ‘’Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest‘’. Frankly, it was a pretty boring affair – and therefore I am happy that the debut of Evilfeast, released in 2004, is more interesting. Okay, it is not a very mysterious album. Its basic approach is getting clear pretty soon. There are aesthetics of Graveland and Burzum, but Evilfeast does not deliver a slavish imitation. Among other things, the blurry production separates them from these two formations. The album sounds very misty and the three ambient tracks have a somewhat surreal appearance. During the entire playtime, it seems that some nightly spirits hover through the dark forest restlessly. To be honest, I wish there would be a slightly more structured, more transparent production. On the other hand, some of us like their black metal exactly this way. So let me put it this way: the mix emphasises the artist's desire to remain underground.
Mr. GrimSpirit, the man behind this project, has chosen an extremely atmospheric artwork (and a very stylish booklet). But despite some ambient excursions, his music is not filled to the brim with atmosphere. The overlong regular pieces aren’t bad in any way, but some of the comparatively rare breaks rather hurt the flow of the respective song. There are some well working breaks as well, for example the one with the almost celestial keyboards in “The Black Heavens Open” which appears after two minutes. By the way, this song stands out in my humble opinion. It holds very grim guitars that create a sinister heaviness. Yet in the long run, the six “complete” tracks suffer a bit from one-dimensionality. There are more tempo changes than in the meditative songs of the two aforementioned projects, but this alone does not lend a track a higher portion of individuality.
From time to time, the artist surprises with nearly explosive, fast-paced sequences. Maybe there are even more than those I noticed, but forgive me, the drums are consumed by the superior keyboards during some fast-paced sections. By contrast, the hoarse throat knows how to assert itself. Its the typical misanthropic screaming and vicious nagging, but performed with a proper dose of dedication. The lack of vocals is also one of the reasons why I see the three ambient titles as the weakest tracks on the album. Anyway, I don't want to pay too much attention to them either in the evaluation or in this review. The album is pretty solid and definitely no waste of time, although a few tracks would have profited from a less bombastic design. By the way, “Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest” celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and maybe you like to join the (evil) feast. But beware, don’t listen to this debut with headphones in the forest. Bloodthirsty insects could lie in wait for you, too.
I found this gem while browsing the internet. I saw the cover and the album title, thought that it must be something special, as the title is very inspirative. And I thought right, although I was yet unprepared for what was to come. Labelled as atmospheric black metal, I expected some slow, droning and lukewarm hymns of dullness drenched in random noises and electronic ''embellishments'', as many (pseudo)atmospheric bands write. But, fortunately, I was wrong.
This band is all about atmosphere. The production is raw, but this adds to the album's numerous strong points. The guitars are clean and have a thick, full and rich sound; they are clean, unlike other raw albums, the reverb they have brings to the listeners' ears consonant, repetitive, haunting, almost trance-inducing beautiful and highly evocative riffs that create a ''wall of sound'', while keys support the riffs and also play many leading lush and eerie melodies, but they never smother the guitar. As for the drums, it seems it's a drum machine, but the rhythm is varied within each song, so the music is not one-dimensional. They are pretty low in the mix, so that more than often they resound like distant heartbeats, especially cymbals, albeit bass drums are thundering throughout. Vocals sound genuinely evil. They are not very varied, but they are performed with heartfelt conviction, being of the rasping variety, similar to Legion's vocal work. They have also an echoing effect added to them, as everything here has, purveying the grim atmosphere. They are not high in the mix, but rather seem to blend with the instruments, sounding like an additional instrument, while remaining audible. Of special mention are the beautiful and poetic lyrics. They possess a dark and menacing imagery, while retaining poetic beauty, being somewhat hermetic and highly metaphorical, with a mystic and a pagan undertone, evoking man's bounds with nature.
All songs are lengthy, the whole album having a duration of an hour, roughly, but there is no filler and not a single momoent of dullness, as it's very easy to immerse oneself into the music. There are six songs and three instrumental synth pieces: an intro, an interlude and an outro. All these are about three minutes of length. Unlike other such pieces that end being skipped, these are very good. A friend not into metal told me he felt unease while they played, so they are truly full of dread; while they give me goose bumps. The intro is especially haunting. It is eerie and brings haunting fullmoon nights to mind. The interlude is melancholic and full of longing.
The whole atmosphere and ambience of this album is a mystic experience, like really walking in a forest by a fullmoon night in winter; a truly rewarding and enthralling listen, best experienced when listening to it with headphones, as to fully catch every subtlety. I highly recommend this album and Evilfeast in general to every dark soul and urge everyone who did not discover Evilfeast to immerse himself into this true piece of art.
Poland has many excellent bands and Evilfeast is one more addition to that bunch. The cover picture of this CD tells you exactly what the music will sound like: dark atmospheric black metal with strong sombre undercurrents. Bands that come to my mind when listening are old Gehenna, Kataxu and even Xasthur occasionally, however, Evilfeast does not copy any of these bands. Despite hailing from Poland, Evilfeast’s style is more Nordic than the traditional Polish one (old Graveland, Infernum, old Behemoth etc.).
The guitars are raw yet powerful and create a very wintry feeling to the music. The production manages to create quite a “big” sound despite not being a polished, professional one. A thing that could be better is the drum sound; here the drums thud along in a pretty unclear way. The vocals are distorted in order to give them a grimmer touch. Feel wise Evilfeast draws from early to mid 90s black metal and manages to do “cliché” titles like “Ode to a Rising Fullmoon”, “Thy Woods are Sacred” and “Towards the Funeral Winternight Landscape” justice.
The synths are used exceptionally well throughout “Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest”, adding a truly floating and dim atmosphere to the songs. For example, the synth intro “Ode to a Rising Fullmoon” conveys precisely the chilling and somber feeling that black metal synth intros used to convey back in the day. Midway through the CD there’s another great synth track called “Solitude Apotheosis” which is full of sadness and longing. The third synth track, “Desolate Fields Left”, ends the CD in an appropriate way. To sum it up, “Mysteries of the Nocturnal Forest” lives up to its name. It’s like walking in a misty winter forest at night led only by the light of the fullmoon.
Even before I knew where Evilfeast was from I guessed somewhere like Poland as Evilfeast possess that dark almost folk like sound that Polish black metal is so well known for. The band sound very similar to Kataxu but I wouldn’t quite put them in the same league as them. The production has that same airy feel and the vocals have that airiness that Kataxu and Leviathan have. There are some truly excellent ambient passages included in the songs and the synth adds a very mystique and sad atmosphere at times. However the combination with the guitars is a little questionable at times. Other than that I haven’t got anything else negative to say about this album. On the whole it is a very decent album and an excellent debut and I can only see Evilfeast getting better.