ALBUM REVIEW: Suicide Forest – Suicide Forest
Tucson, Arizona’s SUICIDE FOREST have proven to be a prolific act despite only being around for the last few years, putting out three demos, a live album and a full length in relatively quick succession, with the band peddling a particularly dark and murky take on depressive/suicidal black metal. Their aforementioned self titled debut is the culmination of their creative output to date, and sees SUICIDE FOREST make a solid and impressive statement that sets a decent bar for the rest of their music to overcome.
Kingdom Of Solitude doesn’t mess around, diving headlong into a bleak and fierce motif with some great guitar and drum work, which is complemented by the subtle yet haunting nature of the keyboards and soaring, visceral vocals. It’s a great, razor sharp piece of music with tight, minimalist hooks and a brooding, Gothic atmosphere that it’s hard not to love, making for an impressive opening gambit that sets a grim and ferocious tone for the rest of the record. Auto-Immolation has a much more open, epic sound, with fuller chords providing a distinct difference from the song that came before. The drums and vocals still possess much of the aggression and intensity of the opening track, but with the guitars taking on a noticeably more glorious feel and the keyboards becoming a little more prominent, this ends up being a much more grandiose affair, without losing many of the elements that defined the first track, adding some diversity to the albums overall sound.
Longing For Nothingness is another mid-paced, bleak offering with shrill vocals, dense, melancholic guitars and a haunting atmosphere that hangs over the music like a thick mist. There’s not much in the way of variety here, and as a result this ends up, despite being a solid piece of music, one of the albums weakest offerings. In comparison with the lengthier songs that dominate Suicide Forest, this album, Baptised In Pools Of Despondency is a relatively short piece of music, but it sticks out for all the right reasons. Eschewing the dark and intense nature of the rest of the album, this song is a sublime, piano orientated offering with a crisp and clean sound, adding a beautiful and brilliant touch to an album that is, for the most part, vicious and discordant.
Sea Of Trees is a decidedly speed driven and caustic affair, with far more adventurous riffs and some of the most impressive vocal performances on the whole record. Subtle yet well placed keyboards help to create a massive sound, and add a palpable, dark ambience to proceedings, without taking over the sound, providing a stark and depressive climactic feel that sets the listener up for the sixth and final track, Cold Dark Comfort, extremely well. This last track is a monolithic, sprawling slab of visceral and epic depressive black metal with some excellent,soaring lead guitars that make liberal use of melody to give this song a solid, hard rock edge that really helps to make it stand out. The keyboards likewise add plenty of the sound of this song, adding a gloomy tinge to the otherwise driven and aggressive song. It’s a great, eclectic song that brings the album to a close incredibly well.
The eponymous debut from SUICIDE FOREST is an incredibly impressive debut record that showcases a lot of promise. Although there are a couple of points on the record where the music could have benefited from being more intricate and incorporating more hooks, the music itself is good and has a great sound, utilising a production that is far cleaner and noticeably more polished than many bands who play in a similar style. Here, the band have laid down a great foundation upon which to build future music, and have set themselves a fairly lofty bar for whatever they have next to overcome.
Rating: 8/10
Suicide Forest is set for release July 6th via Avantgarde Music.
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