WITHIN THE ANCIENT FOREST reviews
An outstanding performance by Australia's premier Doom/Death
band. This album contains everything from the most extreme death-metal
to a cembalo from the baroque age. As most Doom-metal albums, the average
track length is well over 7 minutes. The lyrics consists of a short
summary of a novel that lead singer Andrew Tompkins has written. He
recommends the buyer to purchase the novel in order to fully understand
the lyrics. Cheap trick... :) It's heavy, it's soft, it's extreme, it's
opera, it's death, it's a piano, it's Paramaecium at their best.
5/5
Snokis Reviews5/5
Within The Ancient Forest is everything I like about a
doom album. It's epic, it's heavy, and it has a lot of soul. It is full
of additional instrumentalists and vocalists. There are two different
females who sing, one alto, one soprano. Andrew Tomkins not only gives
us his guttural growl but also really sings and even provides back-up
harmony. In fact, the first song, "In Exordium", sounds like the Alan
Parsons Project for about 15 seconds. Then comes the familiar doom.
WAF has the flute and cello like Exhumed did but adds new dimensions
with piano and harpsichord. And to this musical mix is added the one
thing missing from Exhumed: melody. Forest is filled with some really
great melodies without ever compromising the true metal sound. And,
like Exhumed this album is a concept album. This time the subject is
about the perennial cynic who is in search of truth. All in all, this
album is very satisfying. One cannot even fathom why it has not yet
been licensed to a distributor.
Critical Metal
Of the very few doom bands in the Christian Market today,
I'd say Paramaecium is my favorite. They somehow manage to blend harmonic
melodies with completely brutal metal. This album differs from its predecessor
in the fact that it backs off from death metal a little bit, where "Exhumed
of the Grave" is predominately slow, death metal, "Within" carries on
that style, while adding melodies and more diversity to the music. The
incorporation of flutes, harpsichords, and vocals sung rather tha growled,
adds a completely new dimension to doom/death metal and makes this album
a classic. My favorite tracks are the last two "Darkness Dies", and
"In my Darkest Hour". The first is very brutal from start to finish,
while the second is very soft and beautiful in the beginning, then swelling
to a big finish. I like this album a lot, however there is one slight
drawback. Being from the death metal genre, vocalist Andrew Tompkins'
clean vocs are at times hard to listen to, but vastly improve on their
next album "A Time to Mourn". Overall, this is a great doom metal release,
and my favorite by this band.
9/10
Dead Zine
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