Self-released black metal projects recorded in someone's home are the backbone
of the genre in a lot of ways. Folks passionate about metal, who have managed
to put together a studio in their basement, can be like village wizards,
conjuring infernal arcana in the depths of their hovel, unleashing their
creations upon the world without warning. The mystique of these projects helps
to safeguard the enigmatic nature of black metal as the often sole member
prefers to remain anonymous behind monstrous monochromatic and inscrutable
cover art. The home production also lends itself to lo-fi recording quality
which reifies the ashen filth of early second wave recordings. It's pretty rare
to come across a basement black metal project that doesn't sound like their
attempting to be Moonblood, and even rarer to dredge one up that has ambitions
of becoming the next Fleshgod Apocalypse. Virginia's Foretoken is nothing if
not ambitious, though.
Comprising of guitarist Steve Redmond and vocalist Dan
Cooley, Foretoken is the product of a pride of devotion that only the metal
faithful know and grasp the truth of. They've transformed their love of the
gruesome and faith in the impure to raise a temple of tragic folkloric fantasy,
cleaved from the coal-black stone of a cursed mountainside. Their debut album Ruin combines
the technical death metal dynamism of Necrophagist with the epic,
castle-traipsing, blackened banshee summoning orchestrations of late-career
Dimmu Borgir. A haunted artifice that is far from collapsing into dereliction.
The choice of Necrophagist as a point of reference isn't arbitrary either, not
only does the guitar work on tracks like the wrath unchaining thrash of
"His Rage Made Manifest" and the melo-death bellow of
"Hamartia" compete with these masters of mayhem, but Hannes Grossman himself has been taped to keep the beat for these
dread drizzled processions. Grossman's vigorous drumming style folds into the
more traditional orchestral aspects of Foretoken's style like a blood-soaked
blade run through a soft-cloth, polishing it to a deadly glimmer. Grossman is
such a good fit for the project that it's hard to believe that he was not
involved in the majority of the album's writing. But no, the compositions with
their eldritch lyrics and tight, dauntless guitar work are all Cooley and
Redmond. Just about the only other thing that wasn't done in house was the
performance of the actual orchestral accompaniments. Although, if he is to be
believed, Redmond wrote these sections on his own with no prior experience.
Truly, these carefully planned orchestrations have the touch of a master and
the overall scores feel balanced and nimble, if a little overly long at points.
Sometimes inspiration needs to follow its whims though, and I'm not going to
begrudge Ruin for a having a little fat on its bones.
So how does this strange sorcerer's dream manifest all of
its disparate elements into a cohesive whole? Let's take it track by track. The
wicked, wind-burnt, witch-trial "Bewildering Duress" is easily the
most straightforward black metal track on Ruin with Cooley giving us a brush
with his inner Immortal and Redmond laying down ghastly tremolos which duet
with spectral synthesizer wines and nail-peeling strings in a chorus of
otherworldly foment. "The Retribution" comes in next with a monstrous
tundra tearing war charge, hastened by Grossman's incessant thunderous pummel
and urgent string strikes that rise like volleys of arrows above dare-devil guitar heroics. "A Deathless Prison" begins with a hexed
acoustic section which is quickly torn open by a voracious phalanx of
light-footed guitar work and blood juicing grooves that wind together like a
hangman's noose around your neck before the momentum of the track pushes you
over the edge into a sudden and final drop. Whatever desperate place you desire
as your destination, Ruin will take you there.
It's fairly remarkable the fact that an album with this wide of ambitions comes from such tight quarters. Even with little physical space to work with, Redmond's and Cooley's imaginations were able to break free of their enclosures and travel the Earth in search of stories of witchery and woe, sweeping up heroes and reducing kingdoms to ash in an awful ravenous odyssey of the mind. If this is the first and last album we see from Foretoken, we know that they gave the best they had to offer this world as it crumbles in a crestfallen decline.
Grab a copy of Ruin from Foretoken's Bandcamp here.
