ALBUM REVIEW: Forlorn – The Answer Lies In The Black Void

If you’ve ever been wandering through the woods and felt engulfed by the embrace of pitiful sadness, you might be suitably prepared for the ethereal darkness that lies within Forlorn’s 45 minutes. Born out of their shared passion for the dreary depths of doom, THE ANSWER LIES IN THE BLACK VOID is an extension of ambient experimentalists MANSUR. Martina Horváth (THY CATAFALQUE) and Jason Köhnen (CELESTIAL SEASON) swap alchemising instrumental electronica for traversing ethereal soundscapes to explore the very fabric of doom’s DNA, ripping it apart by its flesh and reassembling it piece for piece.

Opener Mina is sonic subterfuge, suggesting you strap on your seatbelt for a schooling in PARADISE LOST and MY DYING BRIDE theatrics as Horváth’s vocals drift effortlessly over dreary riffs. You’d be forgiven for assuming it’s all a bit ‘been there, done that.’ Thankfully, they’re just warming up.

Listening to Rubicon is the sonic symbolisation of drifting aimlessly through a black hole, guided by the light of the narrator, fighting with the chaos of distorting, fuzz-driven riffs that feel like the darkness is clawing away at you. From here on in, Forlorn is what it feels like to travel panel-to-panel through Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden Of Earthly Delights, experiencing every inch of heaven and hell.

The duo of Horváth and Köhnen show their muster as masters of the dark arts, wielding doom with wizard-like precision and exploring it’s deepest corners. Moult sees you floating outwards in deep space as pulsating electronics and industrial drumbeats keep your oxygen in check, like a twisted meeting of the minds between SPIRITBOX and EVANESCENCE. Elsewhere, Okkultas floods it’s doomy dam with orchestral strings and a shoegaze daze, whilst Curse is a twisted hellscape of harsh and clean vocals colliding. Sure, not everything sticks, like the funeral doom scuttering of Barren or the red-herring Mina, but for the most part, THE ANSWER LIES IN THE BLACK VOID are architects of doom unlike any other.

Where THE ANSWER LIES IN THE BLACK VOID truly excel is in their ability to bind their sonic template with their lyrical content. Whilst the majority of Forlorn fits the bill of exploring the interplay between the lightness and darkness, it’s when you dig below the surface that you appreciate the attention to detail. Take For Nevermore, a song about sleep paralysis. Here, crows caw as if you’re being jarred awake while vocal harmonies lay over each other like honey dripping over yogurt and a blur of sounds twist and turn the track from Crack The Skye-era MASTODON all the way to trippy prog a la DREAM THEATER. As a male vocal clip broadcasts like radio frequency, this song feels like sleep paralysis – this song is sleep paralysis. And that is triumphant.

If Forlorn is truly an exploration into the interpolation of doom into otherworldly soundscapes, then THE ANSWER LIES IN THE BLACK VOID have crafted the year’s most beautifully bleak experiment.

Rating: 9/10

Forlorn is set for release on September 24th via Burning World Records.

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