Heavy. Or as Neil from the Young Ones would say Heaveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey !
Doom/Death bands are not known for being prolific when it comes to output so the fact that this is the Florida bands third album in four years may have a greater nod to their black metal roots than their current swamp-tinged filth. That is not where the dark influences end.
Foreverglade is as dark and dramatically ferocious as it is gargantuan and crushing.
Opening with the title track a clean, post BM guitar rings clear from the gloom before some synch choral voices usher in a nasty satanic death growl and an atmosphere worthy of King Diamond, early Cradle and Bolt Thrower all rolled into one. The gothic echo on the guitar shines like a cultist procession through the bayou and I am hooked. The chugging riff that follows has me by the neck – it reminds me of Jungle Rot and the much-missed Goat Lord.
I have had a trend recently of giving track by track reviews for Ave Noctum- Yoda knows why but I must have thought it added something. Perhaps it did.
However, Foreverglade is an album that oozes, ebbs and flows in such a way that to try and break it into segments would be like trying to slice the swamp from which it came with a knife. No matter how sharp the blade and steady the hand the wielder will just end up sucked into the “Centuries of Ooze” which also happens to be the name of the last track on the album. What a fantastic moniker hey and it describes the feel and sound of this band perfectly.
There are sweeps of melodeath mixed in with raging black metal on the simply splendid “Empire of the Necromancers” whilst “Subaqueous Funeral” feels like Artax drowning in riffs and Andy LaRoque style leads whilst Atreyu looks on in despair.
In musty essence this album takes all the best bits from first wave black metal (King Diamond, Mercyful Fate et al) modern post black metal, death metal, Funeral Doom and sludge, get’s em in an alligator death roll, leaves em under the floating roots of a Cypress tree until their rotting corpses meld together into a stinking , putrid gumbo.
That deliciously rancid stew is called Worm. We all need a taste.
(9.5/10 Matt Mason)
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