Month: October 2012

2012’s Forgotten Tomb are no longer those of Springtime Depression and Love’s Burial Ground and, put down like that, this statement seems terribly obvious, if it did not correspond to the recurring thought of those who believe that the original spirit of Herr Morbid’s creature has been irretrievably lost. The reality is that this latest work represents the natural evolution of Negative Megalomania and draws the best even from a controversial record like Under Saturn Retrograde, offering as a result a mature and engaging work. If we want to find a parallel, Forgotten Tomb‘s artistic parabola can be safely juxtaposed to that of Shining: starting from a depressive black drenched in painful resentment toward humanity, Marchisio and Kvarforth have landed on a musical form with a less extreme approach that the most intransigent fans have interpreted as a kind of betrayal, but which is actually the result of the natural artistic evolution of the two musicians. Not necessarily the landing to seemingly more usable sounds equals a qualitative decay of the proposal, those who have had the opportunity to listen to the last excellent record by Swallow The Sun, just to cite an example, will understand well what I mean. …And Don’t Deliver Us From Evil, opens with Deprived, a track typical of the last Forgotten Tomb, decidedly pleasant though not thrilling; quite different is the title track, a prototype of black metal cloaked in dark atmospheres and completely lacking any opening to more catchy sounds. Cold Summer is another track in which darkness prevails over light, indulged by heavy doom-like riffs; Let’s Torture Each Other is another normal track, along the lines of the opener, but it is with Love Me Like You’d Love The Death and its atmospheres charged with emotional tension, with a finale entrusted to a guitar capable of weaving pathos-rich passages, that the quality of the album soars again remaining at a high level until its conclusion. Speaking of Adrift, it is easy to predict that it will be the track destined to cause the most perplexity among purists: clean vocals lead a decidedly catchy refrain, contrasting with Herr Morbid’s usual rough vocals and a musical fabric that is anything but reassuring. Nullifying Tomorrow closes the work in its classic format (the digipack version includes a cover of Transmission, needless to say by which band, while Buzzov’en’s Sore is the bonus track on vinyl) embodying, in fact, the trademark of Forgotten Tomb‘s current sound. …And Don’t Deliver Us From Evil is a product with an international scope, placeable in affinity between early Katatonia and the latest Shining, but with a sound that is entirely personal and recognizable from the first note, a characteristic, this, that only bands of high depth possess: whether this will allow Forgotten Tomb to gain access to new fans, while losing some of the old ones along the way, we will see in the coming months, for sure this is an album that tends to grow with each listen despite an apparent greater usability than older productions.

2012 – Agonia Records 2013 – Metalhit