The Ambivelant Demon

It’s funny how Iran, Egypt, and The Gulf scenes have become known to me over the past year. Recently, I’ve been made aware of one that exists in Syria, albeit a small one. Half of the known bands that exist there are one-man projects started by someone named Demon of Darkness.

The project of his that I’ll be checking out is a classic black metal attempt named Nokturnal Forest. When I say “classic,” I mean in the sense of keeping with the bad production aesthetic that has been rampant in the genre. Despite the dimmed drums, you can hear bass frequencies pretty well; the bass comes out with amazing clarity in portions of songs where the guitars die down. The five tracks on the 2010 release, “To Embrace The Nocturnal Hymns,” have some great highlights but overall are lacking a certain passion or strong emotional imprint that I desire from music. It’s to the point where parts of songs are just filler to me until he reaches the good sections.

One glaring example of this is the first track, “Through A Winter Night.” The part that I find worthwhile in the entire song starts 6 minutes in and lasts for the concluding 2 minutes of it. To be clear, I don’t like it because it’s symphonic, I like it because the instruments are not a shadow of what they could be and it has some semblance of emotion being portrayed. Another example is the fourth track, “March of the Nocturnal Path,” that has a great melody but the production just kills any chance of something good resulting from it.

The overall theme is a simple one about vampirism, but the lyrics are done with sufficient writing skill so that its descriptive while summoning the appropriate imagery for the readers.

To curse the blindfull beings …
I summon the eternal darkness
To cover the mortals seas …
Arise , Darkness … Possess the worthless souls …
From the unsacred abyss … Rise …
From the unsacred abyss . the darkness arises ..
It gathers to cover the skys …to violate the sacred lies …
To blind the light of mortals … it takes the shape of the horns
For the wrathful visions … it shatters the worn-out lores …

All in all, I’m glad this guy had the guts to create music in an environment so hostile toward it, but this is certainly not one of his best efforts. Innzmouth, funeral doom, is a better product from him by far.