Forged in Blood

I suppose this is a neat little relic of the Italian metal scene, though I can't say it's probably really necessary for this to have been re-released. Sinoath appears to be one of those old bands with a ton of underground credibility but little to no ability to get its act together- perpetual lineup changes, breakups, low productivity in general, you know the deal. It makes sense though, as Sinoath was definitely treading a very strange musical line back in 1991 when this was originally released. Playing a rather synth-heavy variety of primitive black/death metal, I can't say that they sound a ton like anything else from the same time period- there's definitely a myriad of unusual influences in this music, and though I can't say the results are perfect, they're usually pretty interesting, at least from a historical perspective.

Sinoath primarily sounds like a combination of Swedish death metal and the Japanese Sabbat. Most of the riffs seem to stem from the primitive, brooding beginnings of the Stockholm sound (though the vocals, oddly enough, are more reminiscent of Obituary in their retching quality), and the song structures tend to alternate between crawling, doomy passages and uptempo, thrashy numbers with long, atonal tremolo riffing. This definitely stems at least a little from Entombed and Grave, but the music is altered a great deal by a Sabbat-like sound, where '80s thrash or heavy metal riffs get twisted around with a helping of cheesy horror film synths which work to give the music a perplexingly gothic overtone. The feel is most certainly dark and occult (if the song titles didn't indicate such), though you'd have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit to really engage with the feel of it; synth patches this bad make me think more Scooby Doo than Lovecraft.

The tracks tend to be moderately interesting, but massively dated and not particularly well produced. The guitar tone is fuzzy and indistinct, sounding like it would fit better on a Black Sabbath release than extreme metal, and the chirpy drums almost sound electronic at times, as improbably as that is. The best track is probably 'Black River Acheron', which has a certain Celtic Frost quality to it I find more compelling than the pseudo-extreme metal that composes most of the release. Still, I struggle to be particularly compelled by any of this- Sinoath feel a bit behind the times even for 1991, worshiping heavily at the altar of '80s metal while other bands of similar ilk were busy pushing forward with this new 'death metal' thing they'd heard of. Sinoath just sounds like they would (and they did) get lost in the shuffle. If you're interested in a little bit of curiosity from the primordial Italian extreme metal scene, give this a try, but it's ultimately not a really necessary release.

(There's a few live tracks on this reissue, and while I appreciate the more aggressive presence of the band, the audio quality is a pretty cheap bootleg and they overall don't do much to make the release better.)