Playing totally demented black metal from Pennsylvania, Forests Of Old came out of nowhere with this new four song EP that's been blowing me away all month long. The band consists of two members, Bastard Son Of God and Wulv, who play all of the instruments, including Hammond organ. I don't know if these guys have an actual Hammond that they use, or if they're just using a synth that models the Hammond sound, but regardless, they've taken a sound that you usually don't hear in black metal and make it one of the prominent elements on this EP, adding a woozy psychedelic vibe to what is already a completely out of control assault of industrial-flecked black metal.

"Dark Passenger" begins with the sound of birds and distant dark acoustic strum shrouded in reverb, like hearing someone fingerpicking a doleful melody on an acoustic guitar at the bottom of a well, and then is swept up in distorted doomy riffage for a moment; then suddenly the full band crashes in LOUDLY, a blazing thrashy black metal attack with fierce droning riffs, gruesome snarling vokills and insane swooping shrieks that sound like a bird of prey, swarming tremolo buzz, a weird industrial sheen covering everything, especially the vocals, which become warped and overmodulated, as if they are slipping in and out of some kind of vocoder effect. The track just gets more fucked as the band swerves in and out of epic off-kilter black metal and a lurching doomwaltz backed by stabs of orchestral strings, and then after a short bit of silence at the end, it turns into a massive industrial dirge that closes the track. "The Ghost And The Darkness" is a short dark ambient interlude, followed by the frenzied industrial blackblast of "Prides Victim", a twisted mass of machine gun blastbeats and fucked-up angular riffs, the psychedelic buzz of Hammond organs droning over creepy lurching heaviness and damaged rhythms a la Blut Aus Nord, the song becoming more chaotic and confusing as it's bombarded with bizarre processed screams, harsh metallic drones, bits of metal clank, the guitars seemingly going out of tune as the music slows into off-kilter doominess at the end. "Thy Flesh Consumed In Flame" begins with an out of tune guitar playing a warped minor key melody, strange voices, and eerie Hammonds droning in the background, then the music explodes into another furious blast of hyperspeed epic black metal, sort of like a noise-damaged Emperor song, but with wacked-out calliope melodies and sudden shifts into lurching angular doom. The final track "From Within The Fog" closes the album with a short bit of dark ambient drift, distorted buzzing buried beneath swells of murky drone.

This band is fucking nuts. Think Mort-era Blut Aus Nord, Abigor, Black Funeral, Diapsiquir, Spektr, that sort of stuff...Forests Of Old are the latest addition to the pantheon of frenzied, industrial-tinged black metal. Definitely a new favorite. Limited to 500 copies.