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Review: Hate Forest - To Twilight Thickets
Hate Forest
To Twilight Thickets

Label: Elegy Records
Year released: 2011
Originally released in: 2003
Duration: 26:59
Tracks: 6
Genre: Black Metal

Rating:
3/5


Review online: April 9, 2011
Reviewed by: Michel Renaud
Readers' Rating
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Rated 3.11/5 (62.22%) (9 Votes)
Review

Hate Forest is a band I've been meaning to check out for years, but never got around to it. This is a remastered edition of a compilation released in 2003. The promo information says this is over an hour, but what I have here is 27 minutes long.

The first thing that hit me with this album is how low and muffled the sound is. This is remastered??? I'm not one to freak out over production, especially not in Black Metal, but this is a bit too much for a signed band. Anyway, crank up the volume a little and things more or less take shape - this is still muffled no matter how much you turn that knob. The vocals are deep and raspy and bordering on the cleaner growls you'd get from some Death Metal - nothing particularly decipherable, but at least the vocals don't suck.

The music is kind of monotonous throughout, though this is in great part due to the muffled sound which just won't let it "come to life." Overall this has a "later Graveland meets mid-90s Scandinavian Black Metal" vibe to it, with a kind of numbing, dark atmosphere with somewhat unremarkable yet subconsciously addictive guitars and drums. Ultimately though this sounds pretty much the same from beginning to end and is rather uneventful. But, for some reason, I keep listening to the album over and over - I guess it makes for good background music. Not horrible, but I was expecting more. I've since checked out Scythia which does sound much better than this.

More about Hate Forest...
Review: Hour of the Centaur (reviewed by Sargon the Terrible)
Review: Innermost (reviewed by Sargon the Terrible)
Review: Justice (reviewed by Sargon the Terrible)
Review: Scythia (reviewed by Sargon the Terrible)
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