Rating: 9.2

Country: Hungary

Release Date: 2005
(re-released 2007)

Record Label: Autopsy Kitchen

Track list:
1. Opening
2. I Am the Forest Heart
3. A Tempest Never Calming Down
4. Flame of Wisdom
5. Howling of Purity
6. Closing

Total playing time 45:08

Band Website: Marblebog

Marblebog - Forestheart

Vorgrov - Vocals, guitar, bass, synth, doromb
Khrul - Drums

It takes some pretty good music to live up to a band name as bizarre and stupidly vivid as Marblebog. Fortunately, this Hungarian act seems to be up to the task.

First, Marblebog's gloomy black metal doesn't deviate much stylistically from the blueprints set by more quintessential woodlands- inspired outfits like Hate Forest, Through Chasm, Caves And Titan Woods-era Carpathian Forest, and obviously, Burzum. But much like a forest, the only way to fully appreciate its wealth of life and color is to see it from beneath the canopy and investigate the weirdness lurking beneath the surface; which is in Forestheart's case, a host of exotic hooks, folk accents, a vocalist who sounds like he's regurgitating dead soldiers, and unorthodox steel/electric guitar interplay not unlike the kind practiced by Finnish genre crossbreeders Misantropical Painforest and Dead Reptile Shrine. In short, think the most recent sonic escapades of Tasmania's one-man black metal phenomenon Striborg, but imagine if the lo-fi shamanic weirdness was subservient to the music rather than the other way around.

All you post-Filosofem Burzumbabies out there would do well to pay attention to this album and see how it's really done. Meditative though Forestheart may be, Marblebog negates the element of monotony inherent in cookiecutter Varg worship with grandiose riff developent and a host of dramatic dynamic shifts, rolling in with something menacing and dissonant just when you've been swept away by the album's transcendental bliss, as well as vice-versa. For example, half-way through the song "I am the Forestheart," the metal gives way for an introspective doromb and steel guitar cigányzene refrain, which is masterfully restated and incorporated into the song's main riff by means of electric blurs of drowsy tremolo buzz. Then there's the sprawling 13 minute closer, appropriately titled "Closing," an eerie departure from the despondent Burzumisms preceding it, opening with swampy synth broiling around aquatic ambience and a distant death knell pound that sounds like the soundtrack to a zombie outbreak in some tropical fishing village, which then laboriously combusts into a murky, alien bass jam that trudges on and on for the rest of the song as if threatening to coat everything in thick mist and the shadows of mossy branches. It's all so utterly dreamlike. Or nightmarish. I don't think Vorgrov knows the difference, which is what makes Marblebog so intriguing.

In a way, Forestheart is reflective of the listener's intentions; if you enter seeking instant gratification, you will find the listening experience to be as shallow as your own expectations, but if you're involved with what's going on, Forestheart allows you to become an active participant in the music. When you hear the nauseous, slow-motion swirls of disorienting Burzumisms pervading the song "Flame of Wisdom," or the spacey gauze of shimmering FX comprising the opening track, you think "what the fuck's going on here?" -- it compels you to think, and once you begin to understand the clashing elements at work, you're not just listening, you're engaged.

Even the lyricism is competent, expressing some fiercely anti-dualist sentiments riddled with naturalistic imagery that's sincere and poetic, rather than the usual "I roam through the forest with my pagan wolf brothers" fluff.

It's a shame Marblebog intend to release most of their future work on tapes. This is music that deserves to be heard by more than just scene-drifting black metal kids.

January 25th, 2008