A thing to celebrate. The advent of a second Forlesen album, titled Black Terrain and issued by the respected I, Voidhanger Records, comes after the band’s striking 2020 debut, Hierophant Violent (review here), and finds the now-Portland-based four-piece reveling in a lush aftermath of contemplative cross-genre singularity. At four songs, 59 minutes, it carries over the debut’s predilection toward longform craft, but offers more variety in that regard as “Strega” (19:57) and “Saturnine” (18:07) bookend as the opener and closer, respectively, with “Black Terrain” (8:58) and “Harrowed Earth” (12:29) between. This structure is complemented by a linear thread that carries through across the entire span, bolstered by strong divisions of movements in “Strega” and “Black Terrain” especially — perhaps an indicator of shorter pieces coming together as part of the recording process to make each piece; it wouldn’t be a surprise if Forlesen had a four-minute song on their next record, if only because they seem so intent on breaking rules that they’re bound to turn that inward at some point — and results in an overarching flow that presents Black Terrain as one consuming entirety.

This union happens despite the individual tracks having a distinct direction and style, and makes moments like the bursting-forth of “Harrowed Earth” from out of the drone-hypnosis of “Black Terrain” another level on which the care put into this creation can and should be appreciated. At times horrific, Black Terrain is no less engaging for its wretched aspects. It finds Alex “Ascalaphus” Lindo (vocals, guitar, bass, keys, harmonium), Beth “Bezaelith” Gladding (vocals, guitar, bass, synth, lyrics on “Black Terrain”) and drummer Sam “Maleus” Gutterman — who all have arthouse-worthy pedigrees that I’m not going to list because, two albums in, Forlesen is pedigree enough — joined by “Petit Albert” Yeh (guitar, Hammond, backing vocals, synth), with guest glockenspiel and trumpet from (the) Leila Abdul-Rauf, and manifests a sense of world-creation that is its own. It is and isn’t black metal, doom, post-whatever, was reportedly three years in the making — that puts at least some of it as contemporary to the first album, which is interesting — and offers depth enough to truly lose oneself within. An active listen, be it headphones-on or not, is rewarded with boldness of scope, confidence of performance and a sense of the progression underway in Forlesen‘s sound, different styles beginning to fuse themselves into something new, as might happen on something that feels both so epic and personal.

“Strega” begins with a mounting horror drone, almost like cats but maybe people — if you saw Nope, the mind might go there — and piano-laced doom emerges. A layer of guitar seems just to be for maybe-looped noise, but there is an immediate melodic complexity, even before vocals align with organ in the verse. Drums depart for mournful prog shoegaze, keys reminding of Ancestors‘ “First Light,” so too the breadth of the sweep that ensues at four minutes in. Layers and multiple singers top a slow ascending progression, almost ceremonial, and blackened, screaming vocals first enter subtly at the end of a verse, deep in the mix for atmosphere. This will happen again. Already there is motion, the listener is picked up and transported in it. The lead guitar feels skeletal but isn’t at all, adding to the drama of the proceedings before being complemented by the clean vocals and more prominent keys, holding on through the ensuing march again upward. Screams return to mark another verse ending, much less imaginary-feeling this time, and ghoulish layers of probably-vocals lead into a goth rocker riff that could unite doom, duly poised and unrepentantly heavy in tone. Hearing it, I find I can’t get away from feeling like it is religious.

There’s a deadpan layer in the vocals, which makes the “Strega” sound even more like chanting. They sweep again, the guitar solo this time leading the movement toward a more decisively black metal verse progression, running through some particularly cavernous effect. It is at least part psychological trauma. From there everything drops out right at about 11:01 and a raw and badass riff is teased for a measure before far-back strum hits into that same verse, basically alone though everyone still feels present in the room, sonically speaking if not actually there (most recording took place in home studios).

A folkish verse starts and the melody from Gladding brings SubRosa‘s depressive triumph “Despair is a Siren” to mind, splash cymbal behind for punctuation. It’s still a build. Whispers enter, voices joining in, one of them Bowie-esque in the line that ends with “fire.” There’s a chorus of voices then, nearly ’70s pop and praise upon it, until a scream hits at 15:49 and the song eats itself again. Screams and Gladding‘s and Lindo‘s clean vocals together; guitar solo duly grandiose as the screams leave and the instrumental hook line is reinforced. The last guitar solo is still of the extreme metal variety, but gorgeous and not at all glib about the over-the-top progression surrounding where it feels like it could be. With less than two minutes to go, the screams run deep in the mix as things have started to come apart but pick up a final wind to close with an earned-feeling verse on their part. It is done, beautifully.

Noise at the beginning of the title-track echoes the start of “Strega” but is less nightmarish, forming the bed of what will be essentially a single linear build over the course of the song’s just-under-nine-minutes. If it’s theatrical, it’s experimental theatre. Vocals enter softly in repeated melodies — what might be words, it’s hard to tell — and the guitar is there almost before its presence registers in the mind, the patience extending to the introduction of drums. There are layers of chanting vocals soon enough to complement the barely-there verse, but the heavier guitar strum at 5:05 marks a definite arrival, touching ground in a way that even the far-back, maybe-looped drum progression — intentionally vague like the verse in a whirling fog moving intentionally maddeningly into and through harmony with the chant behind, lead guitar waking up and adding a few notes to the morning prayer — wouldn’t quite harness.

That moment when the guitar hits, there’s an inhale right before that’s not audible on the recording but definitely there, and the riff is a drone as well, playing off the when-did-that-happen established melody of the vocals, becoming grand with the keyboard behind and the chanting drone, distortion ringing out in all this open space. Then a voice howling more distinctly, almost shouting those notes, then screaming, turning hellish at about 7:30 in, deep under cymbal wash.  The air turns gruesome; body gore, a visceral twisting. Cymbals are looped, backwards, maybe everything is looped, I can’t even tell you. Maybe the universe is looped. Maybe you’re looped. It is a headfuck of a moment of a song. And then it ends suddenly, exploding.

So enters “Harrowed Earth,” seamlessly and with immediate thrust from the title-track. The sprint is full, heads down black metal intensity, righteous blasting rising, still black metal, churning. Screaming, vocals are deep back, then scathing at the fore. Spitting words. Furious. Glorious. There is a line of melodic guitar standing out in the mix, sort of surveying the devastation being wrought, minimal but surrounded by these furies. It’s psychedelic, truly, and some of the best psych metal I’ve ever heard. And it’s barely half the song. It turns clear-headed in bite for a moment but shifts back to that world it has begun to rip apart, howls and screams and growls dwelling in it viciously. That melodic guitar line is still there, sounding more discordant amid the pummel.

For all its black metal pageantry, whole-album-shifting presence, and this-is-where-we-wreck-shit mentality, “Harrowed Earth” is still fairly trippy in this stretch, crashing into so a running lead guitar can take off at the head of the mix. It sings past four and a half minutes with the drums chasing behind but is ultimately swallowed by the vocals, mostly high-throated and universally nasty, then human shouting, then human screaming. Crash again, the fading cymbal hits, distorted guitar. “Harrowed Earth” is brought almost to silence at about six minutes in, the stark break to the second movement letting it begin more or less as a new song with the song, and yes, the pairing is important.

A re-arrival of vocals is announced with kick drum, subsequently used to punctuate harmonized verse measures. At 7:50, it thunders into death-doom, melodic vocals over low growls, rolling movement, slow and marching; spiritual-trial-underway, not victory or funeral yet. Screams mark change to a guitar solo atop the lumbering, hypnotic than dramatic but definitely both, and plotted in its transitions as part of the unfolding drama. Piano, if that’s what it is, joins vibrantly. Vocals and lead guitar and there’s still growling somewhere in there until a whole bunch of everything drops out for a bit before being revived as the song’s final movement. The funeral, incidentally. There’s melody belted out mournfully, lines folkish and graceful and immersive, and it might be keys, or Hammond, guitar, who knows, as it fades out. Little to do but survey the dead.

“Saturnine” begins with a misdirection of heavy, distorted guitar drone. Four weighted strums before it disappears. Not yet a minute in, the finale of Black Terrain has filled out the residual feedback with another intertwining ambient hum, and this becomes the bed for much of what ensues, building one measure at a time toward a yet-unknown but inevitable destination, mirroring somewhat the title-track, but changed for the proceedings there and in “Harrowed Earth” between. Just after three minutes in, a more prominent hum takes hold and carefully places the central melody in the listener’s mind, where it will become a theme to which Forlesen return throughout. They’re building toward introducing the drums but refuse both being rushed and rushing it, and having already done the work to debunk expectation across the three songs prior, the inclination to follow where “Saturnine” leads feels natural.

It’s not necessarily percussive, but there’s a rhythmic echo behind, and a bell is struck (harmonium?) with these probably-loops surrounding, with Abdul-Rauf entering on duly melancholic trumpet at about 6:30, which they keep vague and deep in the mix — plenty of room — rather than have it burst outward, not quite a drone instrument by its nature, but long notes just the same. 8:17, harsh feedback and low distorted riff, slow, slow, slow still. It’s a major change and over the course of the next minute-plus, one can almost hear ghost vocals screaming lines that may or may not actually be there, but it feedbacks out and fades and at last, the drums begin just past the 10-minute mark. There’s clearer guitar now, echoing the earlier melody if not following the pattern exactly, and a heavy shoegaze gradually moves forward led by a central riff and the surrounding keys. The backing drones are gone but there’s a layer of lead guitar hitting the root notes before Lindo begins singing the verse, soon joined in harmony before a full roll begins at about 12:45, drones rising alongside.

The echoing voices, the drums stepping back to give space but keeping time on hi-hat, and the once more ascendant progression of the march — there might even be a layer of backward guitar there — all seem to call back to “Strega,” but “Saturnine” has its own personality as well, post-black metal in its airy melodicism but still doomed even in its defiance of that spirit. The big finish, then, is emotional. Circa 15:45, a quick thud-thud-thud-thud buildup on drums brings on a held vocal note and a guitar solo that is the crescendo for closing track and album alike; the rhythm guitar track going so far as to throw in a pickslide just in case the message didn’t come through clear enough. As a unit, a band, they ride that part and give due justice to the entirety of the work they’ve done before, crashing into another Gregorian-style verse before, at last, everything seems to let go suddenly. An amp hums, there’s a wisp of feedback, and that’s it.

I don’t imagine many, if any, who started out reading this review have made it this far. Fine. If you take nothing else away from the glut of play-by-play above, take that it seemed warranted given the creative achievement that Forlesen have in what’s still just their second record. One doesn’t want to get into hyperbole (too late), but at a time of year when best-of-this-and-that is on the brain, it’s hard not to think of Black Terrain as something that will outlast 2022, and its reach and sense of flourish will continue to speak to listeners for years to come. In the best case scenario, Forlesen would influence others to try and harness the same heights and depths, but I’m shaking my head as I write this because honestly, what they do here is so much their own that it’s hard to imagine another band taking them on as an influence and not falling flat. But it’s happened before; Forlesen have their influences as well.

As Black Terrain followed Hierophant Violent, so too something will follow it, at least hopefully. For everything accomplished here, it’s worth reiterating that the growth that Forlesen have undertaken between the first album and this one does not feel finished. They do not sound like they’ve said all they have to say as either emotive songwriters or bringers of aural extremity, and whatever they might do subsequent to it, Black Terrain feels like a landmark, regardless of genre. Recommended.

Forlesen, Black Terrain (2022)

Forlesen on Facebook

Forlesen on Instagram

Forlesen on Spotify

I, Voidhanger Records on Facebook

I, Voidhanger Records on Bandcamp

I, Voidhanger Records on Soundcloud

I, Voidhanger Records website

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Ascalaphus from Forlesen

—

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Most broadly, I exist, fleetingly, like everyone else. Where that begins and ends is probably outside the scope of the question. It feels pertinent to begin there because the music we make is often about the loss universal to existence and seeking the transcendent. And everything else is context dependent.

More narrowly, I am a musician and songwriter. If I had to concisely describe our sound, I’d say something like Pink Floyd’s Dogs or Echoes filtered through doom and black metal, though that leaves a lot out. But I’ve written songs since I was a kid and became more serious about it roughly 20 years ago.

I was deeply immersed in black metal and dark ambient and from there got into doom through stuff like Skepticism and Khanate. That creates a backdrop for a lot of my sensibilities, but then I was studying composition and theory in college while obsessively listening to Sigh’s Imaginary Sonicscape and Sunn O)))’s Flight of The Behemoth. Some of my teachers were people that had albums out on Tzadik – including Milford Graves! – so that experimental, avant-garde, sometimes revolutionary way of thinking about music felt within reach. I don’t feel like I can claim that lineage in my music, but it certainly influenced me. Speaking of Tzadik, Kayo Dot’s Choirs of the Eye was another album that meant a lot to me. It’s still really a trip that someone who played on that album is part of Forlesen.

I think all that crystallized into wanting to make music that was as ambitious and grand in scope as classical or modern composition, but with a sensibility that hit a listener on a visceral level. Not that classical can’t do that, but I mean like Tony Iommi, Lou Reed or Michael Gira. Music that leaves space for you to be leveled by the right two to three notes repeated ad nauseam if that’s what is going to be most powerful. I wanted to claw open new sonic space the way Black Sabbath, Swans, Bathory and Neurosis all did. A lot of the time when you see someone cite one of those bands as an influence, it means they basically sound like audio fan fiction, some quite good of course. But I wanted, and suppose still want, not to sound like those bands, but to be like them.

Lastly, working with Bezaelith has dramatically impacted how I think about writing. Everyone in the band helps shape the sound immensely, but she and I began this together and her mark is indelible.

Describe your first musical memory.

Probably my dad playing acoustic guitar or my mom singing to me.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of really cool experiences, both as a musician and as a fan. I’ve played shows that felt like a scene from a movie and I’ve witnessed truly uncanny things in live settings. But as a creator, the best musical memory I have is always the most recent instance of hearing whatever I am working on come to life, especially when other people are involved. There isn’t some time in the past that was better.

As far as life changing experiences go, when I was 12, my dad took the family to Woodstock 94. I saw Nine Inch Nails play their (in)famous set, the one where they were covered in mud. While they aren’t a band that I actively listen to at all these days, that absolutely set my path. It felt dark in a way I hadn’t experienced before. In a certain sense, I’d call it a spiritual awakening. I was seeking out whatever I could find that was dark from that point forward. While my tastes and interests are more evolved and less unidirectional now, that hasn’t stopped.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I feel like if you have any spiritual/animistic tendencies, this is essentially what it is to be alive every day in the modern materialist/materialistic world. This is not a romanticization of some mythic past that for the most part never existed, but it is a prerequisite to endure and navigate if one wants a life beyond the mundane while still existing within society. I certainly fall prey to it myself.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

As a creator, ideally to the here and now, and from there, the future. But perhaps that’s reversed. Being with what is alive here and now and creating from that place hopefully breeds progress. Then again, Motörhead will always be one of my favorite bands. And for a lot of bands, their best work is obviously at the beginning of their career. So, true inspiration must be present, but presence is essential to receive that. Though I’ll note the irony in that statement, given that we sometimes spend 4+ years refining and adding layers to a song.

Within the world, I think new art can unlock new or hidden parts of the universe. It changes people’s minds, perhaps extremely subtly, but certainly sometimes less so. And for that matter, we shouldn’t discount the subtle. The subtle can be quite powerful.

How do you define success?

Any success still exists within a process of losing. The world is on fire and we’re all doomed and damned. This is an eternal truth, but especially so these days. But there’s a freedom that comes with that too. So if you’re someone who feels called to bring something into the world, especially something with a sense of Otherness to it, and you somehow get to do it, you’ve won. You might just get to score the soundtrack to the fucking apocalypse. Everything else is a bonus. Though it’s much easier to say that when it feels like things are going well. And let’s not make this overly pos. Even if through a certain lens just the act of making music is winning, there is certainly plenty of bad art out there.

So, internally: Forging new paths. Doing something that feels unsafe and honest as well as you possibly can. Being a torchbearer, defiantly holding a dwindling light as the world is subsumed by darkness. Or raining darkness upon the light of the obsequious. Getting to make music that feels inspired, in the true sense of the word, with people that I respect.

Externally: Making music that means to someone else what the most important music in my life has meant to me. And hopefully, for it to have as broad an opportunity to reach those people as possible.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

There’s a lot that’s deeply horrific and sad in the Anthropocene, but I think it’s better to recognize it than to turn a blind eye or live in denial. There are wounds we all bear, trauma from what we have been shown of the world, of life, of other people’s behavior and of our own. I don’t know that that’s for the best, in fact, I think by definition it isn’t, but it is a feature of being alive. So the work isn’t to not see it, but to not be blinded or paralyzed by it. That said, I have to acknowledge the relative safety I live in and the amount of horrific shit out there that many people in the world are confronted with on a daily basis. I haven’t been forced to watch war crimes perpetrated against my family.

With that acknowledged, I had an experience with DMT where it felt like the hologram of consensual reality completely shattered and I was being chewed up in the gears of what exists behind it. While on some level even “bad” experiences like that are still pretty interesting, and I do have an interest in the otherworldly and monstrous, it gave me a firsthand appreciation for the Lovecraft quote about the terrifying vistas of reality that would drive us mad if we understood them.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

A body of work that carves out its own sonic space within music. But that’s only something that can happen as a byproduct of being successful in the ways described above.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

To create/destroy. To be as god. Or to be God. Union. The most essential function is in the doing/being. There are certainly many important places this can lead both internally and externally, but they are secondary.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Satan.

Also, autumn’s dark and lovely in these parts.

https://www.facebook.com/forlesen
https://www.instagram.com/forlesenmusic/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hbsfntkd5jzcw2ytorlmy?si=5d69081c91cd47c6

https://www.facebook.com/i.voidhanger.records
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/i-voidhanger-records
http://i-voidhanger.com/

Forlesen, Black Terrain (2022)

No doubt you’ve seen this album announcement by now, as I’m perfectly willing to admit the unveiling of cover art, details, etc. happened a couple weeks ago for Forlesen‘s second album, Black Terrain. The streaming track “Strega,” however, is newer. it would seem to be one of three inclusions on the follow-up to 2020’s legitimately-ballyhooed Hierophant Violent (review here), and it brings the band with members of Lotus Thief, Botanist and Kayo Dot further toward the outer charted limits of what constitutes progressive doom, black metal and so on, beginning with a note of glockenspiel before a sense of mounting horror noisy fade-in leads to a massive, doomed roll, lush melodies, volume trades, an arrangement as deep as you want to plunge, and later, throwing it all down to build up from minimalist maybe-guitar to a consuming and urgent but still slow finish.

If you heard the first record and dug it, you’re either already listening to the song at the bottom of this post or you already caught wind of it when it premiered elsewhere late last week, so either way, I hope you’re digging it. For anyone experiencing the band for the first time now, just open your mind and let yourself follow where the band lead and know that you won’t regret it.

Breathe in, and…:

FORLESEN – Black Terrain – Oct. 28

FORLESEN have offered up the first taste of their upcoming album with new their new single “Strega”. Taken from their upcoming album, Black Terrain, out on October 28th via I, Voidhanger Records, the band draws from dark ambient, epic doom, black metal and slowcore, subverting traditional songwriting.

FORLESEN formed in San Francisco at the end of 2016 and released their debut, Hierophant Violent, in 2020. Comprised of two side-length tracks, it soon found a cult following. Now based in Portland, OR, FORLESEN continues their compositional evolution with Black Terrain, expanding into previously untapped musical realms.

As with their debut, Black Terrain’s monolithic songs, at times approaching twenty minutes in length, fully immerse the listener in a contrast of the serene and cacophonous. “Strega” begins shrouded in eerie atmosphere before embarking on a journey from vulnerable ballad to hymnal dirge. The ferocity of “Harrowed Earth” thrusts the album into the realm of black and doom metal. In the aftermath, “Saturnine” brings the album full circle, culminating in an ethereal mantra.

Black Terrain evokes a sense of the grand, but also the intimate. Each instrument and voice is carefully placed and each musical transition seamless to prevent the mesmerizing spell from being broken. FORLESEN have crafted a stunning cinematic masterpiece.

FORLESEN is:

Ascalaphus (ex-BOTANIST) – Vocals, guitars, synth, harmonium, bass
Bezaelith (LOTUS THIEF) – Vocals, bass, guitars, synth
Petit Albert (LOTUS THIEF) – Guitars, synth, Hammond B3 organ, backing vocals
Maleus (ex-KAYO DOT, ex-MAUDLIN OF THE WELL) – Drums

Credits:

Glockenspiel and trumpet performed by Leila Abdul-Rauf.
Music and lyrics by Ascalaphus except lyrics on Black Terrain by Bezaelith.
All music arranged by Forlesen. Drums and Hammond B3 recorded by Justin Phelps at the Hallowed Halls, Portland, OR.
All other recording done in various home studios between 2018 and 2021.
Mixed by Jack Shirley at the Atomic Garden, Oakland, CA.
Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studios, Pittsburgh, PA.
Artwork by Benjamin A. Vierling

https://www.facebook.com/forlesen
https://www.instagram.com/forlesenmusic/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hbsfntkd5jzcw2ytorlmy?si=5d69081c91cd47c6

https://www.facebook.com/i.voidhanger.records
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/i-voidhanger-records
http://i-voidhanger.com/

Forlesen, Black Terrain (2022)