From the Human Forest Create a Fugue of Imaginary Rain

Somewhere during the moments of splitting-up of Akercocke, a new idea was born, called Voices. This was - in a sense - good news, because after the release of "Antichrist" there was little to indicate the continuation of this type of stylish and depraved sounds (although we finally got them after a much longer time), and there are practically no successors to this prog-black-death style - proper, few who could come close to the phenomenon of Jason Mendonça's group. Behind the creation of Voices were Peter Benjamin and David Gray, half of the last incarnation of Akercocke with their so-called the first, regular period, and this should explain enough of what will happen here. And after the content of their debut "From The Human Forest Create A Fugue Of Imaginary Rain" from 2013, it can be said that this is an album that could easily be released as a Akercocke release.

From this description, an longplay emerges that is not surprising, but extremely glad that it was released. Voices' debut sounds, with a few exceptions, like a tweaked and more naturally produced version of "Antichrist" by a well-known band. As you can easily guess, the whole thing is accompanied by a conventional, rainy-satanic atmosphere, drilling riffs, a huge amount of blast beats, a large dose of progression, diverse vocals (even female ones!) and this perfect bridge between gentleness and brutality. In general, many things look very conventional here. Fortunately, it's nothing bad. After Voices, you simply feel the desire to step into the breach of Akercocke, as a natural development of previous ideas. Vocally, we have a similar manner to Mendonça, although without the death-grind growls, but with much more black metal screechings and - on the other side - pop-like, subtle singing, the riff structures do not differ from Akercocke's albums, most of the drums issues, of course, also, and only the bass plays a rather marginal role here.

There are also differences from Akercocke on "From The Human Forest Create A Fugue Of Imaginary Rain". There's not much of it, of course, but the melo-black influences are clearly noticeable (especially in the middle of the album), more blasting (sometimes resembling a cross between Dark Funeral and Mithras), brilliant, fleshy production without such obvious triggers and the satanic-stylish atmosphere of Voices is mainly focused on distortion guitars, without such spacious guitars as in the original band. This approach, however, works very well, because the quartet has not forgotten about good compositions, which do not lack individual points, a unique atmosphere, characteristic guitars and extraordinary intensity, as exemplified by the best in the list "Everything You Believe Is Wrong", "Endless", "Fragmented Illustrations Of Anger", "Eyes Become Black" and "Creating The Museaum Of Rape".

Voices, which emerged from the ashes of Akercocke, debuted in a very classy and interesting style. "From The Human Forest Create A Fugue Of Imaginary Rain" is quite a rare case when an off-shoot is as good as its original. The gentlemen from Voices exercised restraint in transferring earlier patterns and at the same time added a few elements of their own and did not forget what constitutes good, memorable compositions. And best of all, the evolution of this band/project did not end there.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal