Forgotten Woods
The Curse of Mankind

THE REVIEW

This album was truly missing among the Debaserian reviews of Forgotten Woods, a Norwegian Black Metal band, as seminal as perhaps overlooked. In fact, Forgotten Woods released this album back in 1996, only to vanish into oblivion for the next ten years. In 2007, they unexpectedly released a new full-length, which, although not considered by me to be complete trash, still leaves a bitter taste and does nothing but elevate this penultimate work of theirs, which I am about to review, to legendary status: "The Curse Of Mankind".

The components of this album are pain, despair, and solitude, like any good depressive black metal album worth its name. However, as almost always happens, variability and genius are found in the early stages of the birth of a genre (or subgenre, in this case). Indeed, the depressive atmospheres here are not pursued as ends in themselves and created by the incessant and monotonous repetition of melancholic riffs and distant sounds like CHING-CHING-CHING: the songwriting is quite intricate here, and certain solutions turn out to be eclectic and undoubtedly unorthodox. The songs are very varied within themselves, although the recurring structure features a slow start, an intermediate gallop, a melodic slowdown with arpeggios, solo, and a Viking chorus (often with a spoken part), followed by another gallop, another slowdown, and so on. The influences are those obligatory ones, given that this is a second-generation black band: Darkthrone, Emperor, but above all Burzum, especially concerning the vocals. The vocals, in particular, deserve special attention as they are personally my favorite black metal screaming: acidic, disjointed but full-bodied screams; similar to Count Grishnackh's screaming but more upfront, an absolutely unsettling screaming. Less raw (and perhaps a bit less sincere) than the previous album and less provocative than the last, this "The Curse Of Mankind" stands as the maturity album of Forgotten Woods, the one to recommend and pass down as the summa of the entire Norwegian discography.

The tracks all last over ten minutes, except for a pleasant bluesy interlude, absolutely non-svartmetall, and the final song, which we will deal with later, a cover from Forgotten Woods' side project, Joyless. As already mentioned, the tracks are very varied within but very similar to each other, at least as far as their internal structure is concerned. This should obviously not scandalize anyone who listens to music not progressive in intention, from AC/DC to Avril Lafrigne, let alone those who listen to extreme metal. In short, the album is very homogeneous and lends itself to both continuous and fragmented listening; this is to say that you can enjoy the album's beauty even with a randomly selected track. Unfortunately, picking a random track could make you miss "Overmotets Pris", which is among my top ten favorite songs ever (yes, right in the same ranking alongside Freddie Mercury’s Radio GaGa). In my opinion, this track encapsulates all the greatness, genius, and eclecticism of this infamous misanthropic, nihilistic, and elitist band known as Forgotten Woods. Listen to believe, from start to finish.
Another noteworthy piece is "Den Ansiktlose", very engaging in the gallop.

The album wraps up excellently with "Jomfrulysets Fall", a cover by Joyless. A magnificent piece that requires metaphors rather than adjectives to describe the effects it evokes: after listening to the entire album, the closing track has the effect of swallowing a brick. And the croaking of black crows as the riff dissolves certainly doesn't help to get rid of that brick.