Forestwind: Seasons

Forestwind is a relatively unknown outfit from Finland, playing a simplistic style of atmospheric black metal. Their debut album, “Seasons” is, I suppose, a concept album about the seasons of weather.

Now, technically, this is atmospheric black metal, but I would say in name only. This sounds more like up tempo dungeon synth combined with goth vibes with elements of black metal thrown on top. To further my claim, you’ll notice that the most important sound on this album is not black metal. In fact, it’s not the metal at all. The key component here are the synths used to create the atmosphere for each song. As for the actual metal portions, well, the drums and guitars are easily heard and are by no means washed out of the sound, but that’s about the main purpose they serve. Both sounds are essentially there to add the most basic element of metal possible. The same could be said about the vocals. Wanderer, the sole artist of the band, has a very vanilla voice, especially when it comes to black metal.

With that being said, the goal of the album is to set the mood of each season accordingly through the use of the music. To be honest, bland guitars, drums and vocals aside, I really enjoyed the dungeon synthesqure sound each song had to offer. Although I don’t think that the goal of finding myself in the middle of a snowy field or feeling the warmth of the summer sun on my shoulder was achieved, the atmosphere the synths create do have the ability to capture its listeners in general. As for those drums, guitars and vocals I just brushed aside, well, I stand by my descriptions, but when focusing on the synths, those blander elements play nicely as a distant backup to the main attraction.

All in all, “Seasons” is nowhere near on par with other atmospheric black metal release from artists such as Fellwarden or Darkspace. To be honest, I’m not so sure it was intended to be labeled as such, because I’m sure, Wanderer could have easily added more elements of a black metal sound to his project to give it the depth it lacked. I still think that the synth playing was his true intention and the other elements were simply added to keep things within the metal circle of sorts. Personally, I’d like to see what Wanderer could do be just focusing his talents on creating a dungeon synth album. If he could capture the essence from “Seasons” and put it into a dedicated synth oriented album, I think it would sound great.

Highlights: “Spring” “Winter”

Rating: 3