The Eternal Winter

Forest Silence is another raw black metal project where releases or information is very hard to come by. However unlike many of the shitty acts that plague this area of black metal Forest Silence is of exceptional quality.

The first demo was pure dark ambient adding many experimental sounds without a trace of black metal elements and yet it remains as one of the creepiest releases to have ever graced my ears. This third demo shows a very black metal oriented sound yet it retains much of the roots in atmospheric sounds.

The impression I get from this release is that I am alone wandering through a dark empty snow covered forest without any sense of purpose. The atmosphere is very overwhelming and I have never before experienced anything quite like it

The guitars are a bit difficult to decipher as the riffs are surrounded by static. Often I role my eyes when I hear such static guitars as it is often a feeble attempt to enhance atmosphere but when done well it can be very effective. Such is the case here. The guitars remind me much of Ulver’s masterpiece, “Nattens Madrigal” In fact the whole forest like nature of this recording has many similarities from that album. The riffs are fairly droning and do not change a whole lot which keeps my mood from shifting and I tend to bob my head along slowly with the music.

The keyboards back up the guitars well and really enhance that forest like vibe. The songs often break into eerie short ambient passages which brings out the dark ambient roots. The final track, “Silence” is an entirely ambient peace which contains many noises that you would hear if you were lying down in the forest with your eyes closed and contains some mystical like clean vocals. For the other tracks the vocals are much more of a black metal sound and are really suited to the music and sound like a combination of sadness and hatefulness, and they mix in with the music perfectly without sounding over harsh.

There is absolutely nothing negative I can say about this release. No note sounds out of place and it is composed brilliantly. I can listen to it for hours on repeat without realizing that a couple hours have passed. It is very rare that any music can draw me in to such a degree as this. This is simply one of the finest offerings minimalist black metal has to offer.