Winterfrost

If you haven't crossed paths with Forsth, they are the equivalent of a mid to late nineties black metal boy band. I'm honestly saying, was there this big producer who seen the potential of making a buck and gathered a collection of eager musicians within the uprising black metal genre? This is the impression that comes across with these Swiss natives. You might ask, "What could you possibly mean by all that fiddle faddle?" Well, the overall atmosphere of this sappy bunch comes off as "cute". And I devoid myself from saying cliche, because that would be farther from the truth. The words desperate and contrived would probably ring a more stenchful air of truthfulness. It is almost as if they produced a check list of everything that has been done in the early nineties by fellow Norwegians. Overall, we could just blame Emperor and be done with it. But that would be too easy. Just imagine taking Immortal's winter themes, take the nature-like cover of Enslaved's Frost (with a side shot of a river, mountains, and clouds), combine the keyboards and squawking vocals of Emperor, and you can picture Forsth's Winterfrost—with nothing left to add to the imagination.

The music is more so carried by the keyboards. Which stylistically are played way too drawn out and almost seem there for fluff. That, or to cover up for the basic, uninteresting riffs. A typical song might contain only a handful of riffs. However, when compared to the television personality of Ben Stein's monotonous, dry voice—pales in comparison of excitement. With all seriousness, it is sometimes hard to even tell what the guitar sounds like underneath the dominating keyboard montages. However, track 3 is a more guitar focused song. It probably has the only decent riff on the whole album. It isn't hard to confuse what riff I'm referring to, because they overuse this riff like a new catchphrase from your favorite comedy movie. The riff goes on and on at faster and slower paces. Then there is a break, to only come back to a few uninteresting riffs, then that riff again. After further inspection, it is the same exact fill of the opening riff of Emperor's 'Cosmic Keys to My Creations and Time'. The guitars on the rest of the songs sound very meshed and often like a faded wall of distortion blended into the background. He throws in the occasional palm mute on a slow or mid section and as well as plays the occasional singular fast tremolo riff. The drums on the other hand are heard much better, with an even sound when going slower and show some skill, instead of snare, hi hat, and bass drum syndrome. We get a few thought through fills. However, when speeding up they raise the volume of the drummer's ride cymbal, which he frequently uses when blasting. It is so loud at points, it sounds like the drummer is continually counting off, if it weren't for a few fills in between. The first time heard it, I thought: when is the snare and bass drum going to kick in? The production on his drum set is comparative to many other lower recorded black metal albums: flat and hardly a focal point.

There have been many different bands that play a certain genre and completely miss the point and, or concept. This is what happens when a certain previous band has success, other bands take a hold of the style, and wash it so many times, the true colors of the original start to fade. Forsth's Winterfrost is neither dark, scary, atmospheric or even interesting in the least bit. With the overbearing keyboards, which play three chord, grocery store Halloween time compilation CD concepts. As well as are the dominate feature in the mix, forcing you to focus on their utter cheesiness, instead of the music as a whole. Track 5 sounds like a damn Christmas song; that is as low as it gets. It has a X-mas like tune played on the keyboards and guitars, accompanied with a female voice singing clean, and happily. From Halloween to Christmas, Forsth seem to have made the unintentional holiday bm album. From the basic, squawking Emperor like vocals to the flat drum sound, buried guitars, and overpowering keyboards, you get a description of Forsth's Winterfrost. Which you hopefully will never have to encounter in your metal listening days.