Most Ancient Ones - Hate Forest

The first full length by shadowy Ukrainian band Hate Forest, 'The Most Ancient Ones' offers a little over over three quarters of an hour of rumbling, ominous black metal. The production is very trebly and raw and the songs are characterised by repetitive and hypnotic tremelo riffs, ludicrously downtuned bass, and high-speed, snare-heavy drumming, with the occasional shifts down to a slower tempo and minor chord changes being about the only things that gives any of the tracks any variation. Every song on the album initially sounds close to identical, but sustained listening does reveal subtle melodic differences and small tweaks in song structure. The vocals ...  Read the complete review