Innermost

The year 2022 has blessed us with many extreme metal releases, mostly that of black metal sort. We’ve had Watain’s “The Agony and Ecstasy of Watain”, I Am the Night’s “While the Gods are Sleeping” and Lord Belial’s “Rapture” to name a few, but like a bolt from the blue comes Hate Forest’s new album “Innermost”. Released on December 19th on Osmose Production’s YouTube channel, only 2 days before its official release date on December 21st, it came totally unexpected, even amidst Ukraine’s current situation. Although the previous album “Hour of the Centaur”, released only 2 years prior, was still quite fresh with its overall well received status, the black metal community would certainly not hesitate to give the new Hate Forest album a warm (or in this case “cold”) welcome and embrace it with open arms. So, does “Innermost” deserve a warm welcome?

Hate Forest’s musical approach remains pretty much the same after all these years, staying faithful to what it does best. Those who are familiar with Hate Forest and its style, they already know that it’s black metal with cold, misanthropic and diabolic tremolo riffs, blast beats, double-bass drumming and growling vocals with occasional harsh screams, which is the bread and butter that Roman Saenko still incorporates to this day, even on “Innermost”. All tracks have plenty of those mentioned above, while tracks “By Full Moon's Light Alone the Steppe Throne Can Be Seen” and “Temple of the Great Eternal Night” also have acoustic interludes that later switch to tremolo picking and blast beats, with only a brief instance of mid-tempo riffs and drum patterns on the second track “By Full Moon's Light Alone the Steppe Throne Can Be Seen”. The third track ”Ice-Cold Bloodless Veins” does something a bit different from the rest, it starts off with the main riff and growling vocals without any drums and bass for a few seconds before it starts blasting, and repeats the same formula in the middle of the song, but the final track “Solitude in Starry December” is somewhat too repetitive and straightforward, leaving nothing more till the very end. As for the sound production, it sounds cold and misanthropic as it should, with heavy guitars, drums that aren’t too loud and vocals that blend well in the mix.

Overall, the album doesn’t really provide anything new other than new songs and new riffs, it is still substantial to a certain degree and faithful to Hate Forest’s sound. This album won’t be anything special to people who feel a bit overfed with what Roman Saenko has been doing with this band for 20 years now, but if you’re just someone who is looking for a good Hate Forest album or a good black metal album with growling vocals and cold misanthropic sound, this does indeed deserve your warm welcome.

Written for www.MetalBite.com

Hate Forest shed their reverential grandeur and delve back to the earthy aggression of their formative years for their latest album ‘Innermost’. If ‘Hour of the Centaur’ struck a rather stirring, defiant tone, here we see Roman Saenko turning Hate Forest into an expression of wanton despair, spite, and misanthrope. A lot has changed in the two short years between each release. An optimistic rage that welcomed what the future may bring has morphed into a focused anger at what the present has brought us. Whilst Drudkh’s first post Russian invasion album ‘Всі належать ночі (All Belong to the Night)’ may have been Saenko’s attempt to bring a message of solidarity and catharsis to the people of Ukraine and those around the world helplessly looking on, ‘Innermost’ is the more personal expression of disjointed fury.

Whilst the presentation of ‘Innermost’ is undeniably slicker than early Hate Forest from ‘The Most Ancient Ones’ era, there are clear call backs to this time. A wakeful, uncomfortable unease sits at the heart of these tracks, despite their flowing rhythmic waves and undeniable momentum. The chord progressions flirt with dissonance, but even at their most melodic they never seek to strike a hopefully tone. Note interchanges are compressed together in tighter clusters. They still flow in the linear, intuitive style so familiar to those well acquainted with Hate Forest. But there is an anxious, frantic element of hyperactivity that keeps the thematic material swirling in a miasma of background upset.

Despite the cold, orchestral tone adopted by the guitars, the overall aesthetic is a degree or two colder than the preceding album. Drums are somewhat supressed, offering only impressionistic expressions of the fluid blast-beat interchanges that are another signature feature of Hate Forest. The familiar guttural vocal offering is intact, but is supplemented by mid-range, monstrous rasps of misdirected malice. This further heightens the general feeling that Saenko is not entirely in control of proceedings. Not in the literal sense, but in the artistic sense one gets from certain forms of chaotic black metal, whereby the music appears to run outside the sphere of influence of the musicians themselves, and into a realm of pure expression unshackled by the formalities of music theory or technique.

This is noteworthy as far as Hate Forest are concerned, as their style has – despite its latent triumphalism and fury – always given voice to a remarkably restrained version of black metal. There is chaos and disorder within their body of work, but when taken against comparable artists there is a degree of mastery and poise that sits at the macro level, expressing its will over the apparent anomie beneath. This downbeat tone has come to define a good chunk of Ukrainian black metal over the years, and it has begun straining at the leash on ‘Innermost’, as the inner barbarians approach the gate, threatening the hierarchical unity within.

Despite these comments, the tried and trusted Hate Forest formula remains very much present, like a hidden backbone propping up these pieces and fashioning them into uniformity. Given everything that has happened to Saenko’s homeland in the intervening years between this and the release of ‘Hour of the Centaur’, the extent to which he still exercises emotional and structural control over his projects is noteworthy, enough to at least direct them into a coherent expression of events so vast and complex they are difficult to absorb for any one individual.

Originally published at Hate Meditations

Putin’s terrible war is still raging in the Ukraine. Nevertheless, the well-known bands from this country release new albums as if everything would go its normal way. At first, Drudkh published a new full-length, now Hate Forest follow. The artwork is simple yet effective, too bad that I cannot say the same about the music. Hate Forest do not make everything wrong, by far not. But it is a fact that “Innermost” holds light and shadow.

A component I do not like very much are the vocals. They follow a death metal approach, not always, but too often. This mega-deep growling fails in the context of black metal. Some fervent, hateful screams accompany them from time to time, for instance in the first song called “Those Who Howl Inside the Snowstorm”. I write this title, because it is simultaneously a description of the entire album. The vocalist howls and growls, while the guitars play the role of the snowstorm. Sometimes this recipe works, for example in the opener or (partly) in the second song, It comes into full bloom after 3:30 minutes. Merciless guitars celebrate a sharp, powerful riff and wipe away a comparatively melodic section. Unfortunately, it cannot be ignored that some unleashed high-speed eruptions are going nowhere. The compact opener does not suffer from any misleading twists and turns, but the longer tracks fall victim to their own monotonous noise from time to time. They create parts which are not overly exciting, to say it politely.

Hate Forest try to take countermeasures and so the storm calms down two times in “Temple of the Great Eternal Night”. Only an acoustic guitar remains and plays primitive sounds. They are probably not artistically valuable in terms of technique, but they add an atmospheric note. Alas, that’s not enough to banish the slightly stale taste the album leaves. The permanent high velocity and a relatively large number of more or less vapid guitar lines condemn the album to one-dimensionality. I regret this, especially in view of the promising opener. But we all know that it seems to be easy to pen one good song (and put it on the first position), but the difficulties begin when it comes to the creation of a full album.

The opaque, the drums disadvantaging production reminds me of the debut of Cold Earth, but it does not deliver enough differentiation. Given this fact, it emphasizes the lack of musical variety. I don’t think that the black community needs an album at the interface of Judas Iscariot and “Transilvanian Hunger”, at least not without high-class song-writing. “Innermost” has its fine, intense moments and it’s good that the metal production in the Ukraine goes on. Yet this work will not have a lasting effect on me.