With the many forms of black metal that have come to grace (or curse, depends on who you’re asking), it can be hard to pin down what can be considered “normal” black metal, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t bands that don’t perform it spectacularly well. There have been and always will be bands that don’t really do anything with the sound of black metal to sound compelling or even mildly interesting to be good at what they do. And while that can sound incredibly underwhelming at times, acts like Forest Whispers are what keep the style going strong and proud.

There are always so many different and special flavors that go into a solid black metal album that must come into some sort of a good balance with each other in order for the release to become something that’s even remotely entertaining. The ensuing material could range anywhere from caustically heavy and harsh to ice cold riffs one after the other. Somehow, Forest Whispers managed to find a pretty good middle ground between those exact two as their latest effort of “Arkany Zniewolenia” is the exact sort of black metal release the likes of which is what many acts of the style strive to be before they fumble over the intricacies of it all. Instead of fumbling, Forest Whispers managed to rise and conquer with these six tracks of flavorful Polish black metal being a whole lot of plenty that I’ve seen before, but damn if it isn’t entertaining all the way to end from the excellent musicianship that all converge gloriously within “Arkany Zniewolenia”. Every moment of this record brings a delightful amount of icy riffs and scathing heaviness that wraps its way all the way around this release to enable it to quickly become an engaging listen that really treats to listener from fabulous vocals, brilliant work of the strings alongside an amazingly efficient acoustic guitars, and the drums whose beats are all but intoxicating.

As I said, Forest Whispers has created an album the likes of which we’ve all heard before, but they’ve managed to cross the bar of making nothing new sound pretty damn good as many bands tend to rest at making their whole bunch of nothing new sound okay at best. But it’s with “Arkany Zniewolenia” that we get something that hints at greatness amongst all of the enjoyment that’s clearly to be had within these six tracks that I can’t help but recommend.

LISTEN to “Arkany Zniewolenia” on Bandcamp here or via YouTube below.

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