Dark Forest

One glance at Land of the Evening Star and it's pretty easy to get the gist of what Dark Forest are about. The spidery logo, the band's name echoed in gloomy green trees on the cover and titles like "Northmen of the New World" identify the act's preoccupation with harsh nature and Nordic history, signalling the blackened metal the album (barely) contains. More surprising is the immensity of Dark Forest's sound and the fact that the entire performance, at least on the recording, is the work of one guy from Calgary. Land of the Evening Star aspires to the epic and symphonic rather than the raw and stripped down, so the album is lush with orchestral arrangements and what could almost be ghostly Viking choirs - a cinematic panorama that threatens to overwhelm the more basic black metal riffs and snarls interspersed throughout. The combination works well, but what lingers after the final echoes die out is the memory of the lone, haunting tremolo guitar that weaves in and out through the entire album, like a lead character questing through the cold, dark north