Paramaecium

Item: Within the Ancient Forest
Author: sesspool

Within the Ancient Forest

(1996)

Reviewed by sesspool

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Label independentDead Zine2002

death metal doom metal

Here we have a concept album... the entire concept being Andrew Tompkin's rip-off novel titled the same. If anyone has ever read fantasy (or has been for a while) then they have undoubtedly read the classic about the boy who must travel to the tree and seek life... (the name and author elude me at this moment... i'm so horrible with those...) here Andrew blatantly and horribly rips off a great fantasy classic and uses some of the STUPIDEST characters to paint a picture of a boy becoming a man in Christ and finding his road to heaven. I say this... because the lyrics are LITERALLY paragraphs directly excerpted from the pages of the book. They craftily put this to some decent doom music, and make it an album... they sold this album for 20 us dollars. Then they wanted you to buy the novel (giant 100 something page novel) for an additional 15 (or 10 if ordered together). This album is much more tame than Exhumed, but it does have some good points, and some similar points at that. Jayson Sherlock went almost nil on the drum intensity... no real death metal here... just straight doom moved to a mediocre area of the genre.

I would give this album a lower rating, but I can't deny that there are parts that just scream heavy... and dark. Some of this album has fantastic feeling and some very good production. Unfortunately, the lyrics flat out suck (sorry for offense). The album is null of creativity in the lyrics, the music can be good, but does nothing to enhance the utmost cheese in a doom metal album I've seen to date. If you enjoyed Exhumed, pick this up just so you don't have a "what if" mentality... you may like it more than I did, my friends like it more... oh well. Overall, this cd is long forgotten (other than for the review) in my cd rotation.

6/10