Carpathian Forest
Morbid Fascination of Death

"Morbid Fascination of Death", from 2001, right from the cover, recalls the stylistic continuity with the previous album, "Strange Old Brew", with which it forms an ideal diptych.
Nordavind (unfortunately, I must add) leaves the band right during the recordings of this album, which in my opinion represents the last credible work of Carpathian Forest.
Now the project revolves around the drunken dwarf Nattefrost and it’s no coincidence that those thrash and punk influences that have always inspired our artist’s pen have intensified. Luckily, good old Nordavind, before saying goodbye forever, leaves us with a handful of tracks that providentially resurrect the more introspective side of Carpathian Forest, thereby uplifting an album that would otherwise have had little to do with black metal.

Nordavind still appears in the lineup, lending his guitar here and his keyboard there, but most of the tracks feature only Nattefrost (guitar and vocals), Tchort (bass), and Kobro (drums), supported by a flotilla of extras called in to give their scant contributions. "Welcome to hell!!! You sexual demoralised son of a beach..." is the elegant welcome addressed to the new member Vrangsinn, who, however, will accomplish very little on this album.

Martial rhythms, synth, distorted bass, and the croaking of Nattefrost in "Fever, Flames and Hell" introduce us to the album’s alienated and perverse mood: it's evident how the music of Carpathian Forest, stripped of its "depressive" soul, has definitively shifted towards the excessive and provocative tones of a dirty and essential black'n'roll, increasingly soaked in vices, extravagances, sex, abuse, military-like suggestions, and a sui generis anti-Christianity ("You are born by a whore by a filthy cunt which spreads disease: the disease of God" is the phrase inside the booklet that better than a thousand words explains the band's attitude, increasingly distant, despite the moniker, from forests, icy nights, werewolves, and full moons).

What can I say, though devoid of substantial news, the album is well put together and features musicians increasingly in tune with each other who, with power and precision and drawing equally from thrash, death, punk, and black, sketch angular vignettes teeming with wickedness and morbid visions: if "Doomed to Walk the Earth as Slaves of the Living Dead" delivers the most typical Carpathian Forest, the title-track reminds us much of the Immortal of "Battles in the North", while the subsequent "Through Self-Mutilation" starts with a riff evidently lifted from Morbid Angel (an influence we’ll notice on more than one occasion).

However, to testify to the start of an incipient decline of inspiration, here we find the re-proposal of an all-time classic, "Carpathian Forest", a true anthem of the Carpathian Forest's "Misanthropic Black Metal", which we can finally hear invigorated by a professional production.

Black, essentially, resides in Nattefrost's sandpapered throat, and in the dark shades that Nordavind has managed to leave here and there as a memory of himself. "A World of Bones", which seems written by Burzum, is a cold and inexorable march of decadence and misanthropy supported by crackling arpeggios and gloomy keyboards. "Cold Comfort", probably written by a demon-possessed Badalamenti, is the typical piano and sax ballad that has now become a habit in Carpathian Forest’s house and directly recalls the moods of that "The House of Whipchord" that had shocked us in the previous "Strange Old Brew".

The concluding "Speechless", finally, for guitar, piano, and whispers alone, entirely performed by Nordavind, is the worthy farewell from the most black soul of Carpathian Forest (as well as from the most disturbing grin of all black metal – see the photos to believe!).

There is also room for two bonus tracks: "Ghoul", by Mayhem, is an insider's cover that resurrects the only studio testimony of the late Dead; "Nostalgia" is instead an evocative excursion of almost ten minutes of piano and saxophone, which however tends to overuse a formula that is beginning to lose its novelty.

If you liked "Old Strange Brew", you cannot deprive yourself of this "Morbid Fascination of Death", its worthy continuation.