Forgotten Woods - Race of Cain

Rating: 9.0

Country: Norway

Genre: Black Metal

Release Date: 2007

Track list:
1. Race of Abel (Intro)
2. One Day
3. A Landmine Reprisal
4. Intolerance Is the New Law
5. Jedem das Seine / Erasing the Fuckhead Majority
6. Here, in the Obsession
7. The Principle and the Whip
8. Nightly Paradise
9. Third Eye (New Creature)

Total playing time 51:55

Band Website: Forgotten Woods

Forgotten Woods - Race of Cain

Olav Berland - lead and rhythm guitar, bass, drums
Rune Vedaa - lead and rhythm guitar, bass
Nylon - lead and rhythm guitar, bass
Thomas - vocals

The first thing one invariably notices listening to Race of Cain is that its production is quite shitty. Self-consciously shitty, I'm sure, but still shitty. The guitar tone sounds compressed to hell, and everything just strikes me as flat and dry, as if I were curiously listening to a stray tape I found warped by several summers of heat in some musty attic. When the most salient flaw of a black metal album is its sound quality, it typically goes without saying that the recording in question is the product of some nobody Darkthrone throwback, but that assumption couldn't be further from the truth in this case; with Race of Cain, Norwegian veterans Forgotten Woods have mutated the core of their archetypical Nordic black metal into a framework of eclectic lo-fi rock and damaged post-punk.

If I was forced to define this album in a sentence, I would settle on calling it a perseverance of stylistic constraints. Yes, Race of Cain is as much Velvet Underground as it is Ved Buens Ende, but the shit production alone should be sufficient evidence that the band's sudden diversity has not burdened them with any reservations, or worse yet, denial regarding their roots; sure, the [actual] opener "One Day" sets an ominous tone by reminding us of goddamn Mastodon, but the shorter, crustier numbers here still channel some welcome Hellhammer influence with their juxtaposition of primitive grooves and a flat, barely-there low end. Whilst the said material anchors the album's oldschool credentials, the rest is pretty far out there, highlighted with tasteful psychedelic embellishments (in a very base sense; the album certainly never achieves any notable heights of cosmic trippiness, unlike the recent sonic development of black metal hipster darlings Nachtmystium), slow-burning melancholia, punk rock swagger, and there's even a lilting folk song featuring glockenspiel and female vox. Don't let that scare you off, though, as the guest singer is not just an ornament who croons about sodomy in typically chauvinist black metal fashion; she has a genuinely nice voice, and the manner in which her vocal melodies converse with the lead guitar in "The Principle and the Whip" is the highlight of the album. And while there's plenty of scraggly blasting to be found, such instances merely serve to draw attention to their own extremity whilst we, the audience, wait patiently for our media players' timers to count down to the more captivating mid-paced affairs like the stunning "Nightly Paradise".

The theme of Race of Cain initially struck me as just another manifestation of some vague teenage rebellion philosophy, complete with snarling about the nebulous scapegoats that are "conformity" and "the majority", but painfully blunt execution aside, Forgotten Woods' agenda becomes explicit with an interview sample inserted near the album's climax. This interview consists of a lengthy, strawman-riddled bout of verbal fencing between an idiot radio evangelist (Bob Larson) and a secular anti-humanist who champions the establishment of a police state based on social Darwinistic values; if the title of the song in which this sample occurs is of any indication ("Third Eye (New Creature)"), Forgotten Woods -- perhaps troublingly, for those of you who prefer black metal with lyrical themes about blizzards and necroyetis -- seem to favor the debunked science and bitter zeal of the latter individual. As soon as the guest openly confesses to yearn for a fascist dictatorship, the band stomps back in with a winding psychedelic lead over which the vocalist sardonically barks "sieg heil", mocking the frail taboos of their listeners. Clearly, this is all a little more ideologically involved than the likes of Darkthrone's "Fuck Off and Die". This climax is a sonic deus ex machina if there ever was one, and facilitates an appropriately offbeat, stilted ending for an offbeat, stilted album.

Race of Cain is outstanding as far as "comebacks" go, and it's also evidence that unlike the majority of their Norwegian peers, Forgotten Woods have not forfeited their creative energy on musical hero worship; however, they feel that this fact affords them the right to spent more time satiating their egos than their listeners. The result of this self-interested intrepidness is a generally sweet lo-fi rock album riddled with obligatory patches of clickety-clack black metal that proves stimulating in the occasional vibrant flash of mournful artiness rather than as a cohesive whole. It's interesting music that's not afraid to wander from its comfort zone in a manner that's not merely cosmetic, but it would behoove the band to instill a sense of thematic wholeness into future recordings that complements the unusual degree of internal consistency in their fanatic idealism.

September 5th, 2008