In The Woods...
Heart Of The Ages

Usual refined cover. Usual refined font. Usual poetic name.
Usual music? At least this time, no.

Let's admit that you bought the CD without knowing anything about the band in question; just randomly.
Let's also say you were lucky enough to find this CD since it is practically impossible to find.
What would you expect from a CD like this? A lot of black metal with atmospheric/gothic/romantic influences; after all, the cover leaves no doubt, too refined for a death metal band and not progressive enough for a progressive album.

In The Woods, however, take everyone by surprise by presenting a heavy doom, in the sense of slow, at times shaken by hints of old style black metal as in Wotan's Return or particularly epic and catchy tracks that would not look out of place on a Cradle of Filth album, although the kitsch is fortunately not a mainstay for In The Woods.
Some riffs are reminiscent of early Anathema due to the guitar overlay and the epic voice that at times is reduced to a simple lament, while others can be traced back to the darkest, leanest doom such as that of The 3rd And The Mortal. Elsewhere, we instead discover simple but very successful atmospheric experiments as in the very long Mourning The Death Of Aase, or references to early Immortal, the real Burzum, and the true Norwegian black metal (truly kitsch?) in general.

It's incredible the ability of In The Woods to blend very different elements such as vocal parts in pure Burzum's style (you'll struggle to distinguish them from the original) or purely atmospheric parts, simple instrumental piano interludes, or fleeting appearances of female voices as in Pigeon.
The average length of the tracks varies incredibly from pieces over 13 minutes long to small shards, which are not shards due to their slowness, lasting two or three minutes. Perhaps here lies the great ability of In The Woods, the union of so many elements never manifests as simple collages where individual influences blend homogeneously but, for example, purely doom pieces where here and there more lively riffs appear, on the verge of black, so as not to tire the listener with the same formula repeated over and over but by offering for each song a different mix of doom/black metal and "ambient" without ever falling into the pure academic exercise and copy-paste typical of many bands of the genre.

An album definitely recommended for those who love the aforementioned artists, whether they are Anathema, Burzum, or The 3rd And The Mortal, and perhaps for those who love only one of these but would like to get closer to the style the others are standard-bearers of. An excellent Bignami.