AN NCS INTERVIEW: OLD FOREST

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 252025
 

(James Fogarty is a man of many talents and musical incarnations, but clearly one of his favorites is in the guise of Kobold within the British black metal band Old Forest. That band, and their newest album Graveside (out now on Soulseller Records) is the focus of Comrade Aleks‘ interview with him that we present today, though the discussion turns to come of his many other projects and bands as well.)

Bands practicing any of the old school genres nowadays do not have to be original, they are not required to be. We approach such bands with a very specific request and expect to receive impressions conditioned by a clear code, a set of musical, lyrical and visual attributes common to the genre.

British black metal band Old Forest does not hide its intentions to express itself with the traditional features of the “second wave of black”. The name and logo itself, and the cover of the new album based on the 18th century painting ‘Moonlit Stoke Poges Cemetery’, exude a unique old-fashioned charm. Song titles such as “The Curse of the Vampire”, “Forgotten Graves”, “Spawn of the Witch” and so on categorically indicate the subject of their lyrics.

Although the label describes Old Forest’s approach to recording as “primitive and regressive”, this does not mean that Graveside will irritate your eardrums with its sound like the scraping of dead man’s claws on your window pane. Old Forest‘s eighth album is an honest and artful piece taken to the extreme level of verisimilitude. Their moderately angry, sincere, coffin-grim black metal comes straight from the ’90s, which is not surprising if you remember that the band has been active since 1998. With a deliberately simplified approach to writing music and a general tendency towards traditionally repetitive themes that build up the atmosphere, Old Forest catches you with memorable, sharp solos, rhythm changes, and even vocal melodies or the utterly vampiric harpsichord’s tunes.

Here’s the interview Kobold conducted with us soon after the Graveside release on Soulseller Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OLD FOREST

 Interviews  1 Response »
Mar 272023
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with Kobold from the UK black metal band Old Forest, and under other guises a participant in Ewigkeit, Nattehimmel, Jaldaboath, and more.)

The first stage of Old Forest‘s career wasn’t robust: The band started in London, 1998, released the debut album Into the Old Forest in 1999, and was disbanded in 2001. It was re-formed in 2007 and the wheels turned faster this time. Despite the band’s mastermind Kobold’s occupation in a few more bands since then, Old Forest recorded six more full-length albums and some smaller releases.

Kobold played with the famous In the Woods…, did some “Monty Python” with Jaldaboath, and experimented in his solo project Ewigkeit, but he always had enough time to keep his black metal Old Forest alive, and this March the new album Sutwyke is to be released through Soulseller Records.

So here we are… ready to breathe deep the smell of rotting foliage and the raw soil, and feel the cold wind of ’90s black metal while reading the interview we did with Kobold.

(Thanks to Jan of Sure Shot Worx for organizing the interview.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: OF WOLVES, OLDD WVRMS, UNENDLICH, PERNICION, EWIGKEIT, LACERATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 072019
 

 

At the not-inconsiderable risk of overwhelming our visitors with new music, I’m following up yesterday’s two-part round-up of music from the black(ened) realms with another collection of new tracks. One of them is yet another example of black metal, but the songs that follow are much more wide-ranging in their styles — I made a conscious decision to compile a varied playlist that I hope will be appealing, but will at least keep you off-balance. All the songs are from forthcoming albums.

OF WOLVES

Beginning last October, Chicago’s Of Wolves began rolling out three songs that they had originally composed as separate pieces but then, after noticing the interesting flow among them when performed live, decided to combine into a single track on their new album, Balance. The first of those, “Clear Cutting”, premiered at DECIBEL; the second, “Bloodshed”, premiered at our own site in November; and the third, “Heart To Hand”, got its debut at Sludgelord last month.

Now the band have released a combined video for these combined tracks, and as of today have made it available for download on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): EWIGKEIT, HORIZON ABLAZE, IGNIS HAERETICUM, KANASHIMI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Oct 292017
 

 

This is Part 2 of a three-part SHADES OF BLACK feature for this week. As I explained in Part 1, I assembled a dozen items, all but one of them consisting of new music. I arranged them in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into three parts. I’m going to try to finish Part 3 in time to post it on Monday morning.

EWIGKEIT

James Fogarty has a long and impressive list of bands and solo projects on his resume, including The Meads of Asphodel, Old Forest, Svartelder, and In the Woods…. But his longest-running project, the one that came first, is Ewigkeit. The first album under that name was Battle Furies, released in November 1997 by the Eldethorn label, and now it’s being released again — but this isn’t a mere reissue. Continue reading »