EVILFEAST
“MYSTERIES OF THE NOCTURNAL FOREST”
Album Review by Dark Juan

7/10

Evilfeast is: Another person with entirely too much time on their hands and far too much talent. Not that Dark Juan is jealous. Oh no. Just because I can barely play the guitar…

GrimSpirit – Just does everything, butty bach.

It’s Sunday evening at Dark Juan Towers and I am replete with all manner of good things after the most almighty Sunday dinner. The hellhounds of Doom, Stench and Greed have been walked and I have managed to survive the Anti-Popemobile’s brakes failing on me. So, my particular part of the Volkswaffe is currently ensconced at a Guernseyman’s garage. This of course means that I am obliged to drive a fucking Renault for the next week or so, but it’s better than returning to the Third Circle of Hell and having to undergo the usual critique of my evildoing by Astaroth. He’s just so bloody picky. I mean, he’s like, “I note on November the 6^th, there was a small child in your path when you were on foot in Carhaix-Plouguer. You failed to kick said child in the face in passing, and you did not hail Satan either. You’re clearly being corrupted by Christianity. What do you have to say in your defence?”

I reply, “Well, you ugly red source of all evil, basically you can go fuck yourself with your own pitchfork, because I have deflowered 37 virgins this month, as well as 24 animal sacrifices for scrying purposes, burned down four churches, one synagogue and two mosques, as well as teaching a number of teenage Jewish girls just why gentiles are better and I made a number of altar boys into heroin addicts and there was a paedophile Catholic priest. After giving him the benefit of my attention for a number of hours, sans anaesthetic or mercy, he admitted his misdeeds and is currently going through the postal system of Vatican City and the UK simultaneously. It might be some time until various parts of him reach the Archbishops of Nigeria and Sierra Leone. So, you red skinned motherfucker, what have you done besides prod a few souls with your oversized toasting fork? How about you just piss off before I launch you?”

So thusly do my demonic debriefs go. I have no respect for authority. Unless I am that authority. Doesn’t matter if God himself showed me his glory and told me he was my true master. I’d still be like, “A) No, you’re fucking not. Get over yourself. B) Where the fuck have you been over the past 2018 years? C) If you were watching why the holy hell didn’t you sort out your fucking demented creations? And D) In the human race, you took a perfectly good monkey and gave it anxiety, you absolute cretin. Thanks for all the mental health issues I suffer!”

He too would be told to fuck off before I took another virgin over the altar, like a sacrifice (Thanks for the spectacularly timely lyric, Queensryche!) just to spite his big, beardy face.

So, Evilfeast are a one man band from Poland composed of a person called GrimSpirit, who has bizarrely decided to re-release a record from 2004 no fucker had heard of in the first place called Mysteries Of The Nocturnal Forest, apart from some extremely dedicated fans of the scene in Oslo. And you can bet your bottom dollar we are listening to black metal. The clue is in the title. A sodding forest AGAIN. Why? What is this singular fascination black metallers have with fucking trees? Trees aren’t even that metal. They are made of wood. Also, a nocturnal forest… Well, guess what, you Eastern European chancer, all fucking forests are nocturnal EVERY SINGLE FUCKING NIGHT!!!!! And it is mysterious too. I bet this forest isn’t that mysterious, and is absolutely chock full of corpse painted loonies bumping into each other and apologising politely before discussing said mysteries of the nocturnal (it’s the 4^th September, a spectacularly inauspicious day in the occult calendar and so far members of Belial’s Children, Sons Of Elmek and Shitfuck Cuntbuster have all got lost in the nocturnal forest of mystery because none of them thought to bring a fucking torch with them, because generally, nocturnal forests are dark…) forest and having a massive falling out over whether Count Grishnackh should have killed Euronymous. Here’s a clue for you… its only music. Jesus. No one should die because of music.

Anyway, having got that off my chest, this isn’t a bad record. It’s the kind of atmospheric, orchestral black metal that Emperor and Daemonarch made their own, with the now classic production job of drums that are merely ghosts of themselves (apart from the cymbals, which clash and smash and jangle their way through the mix), large, sweeping swathes of keyboards over demented speed and guitars recorded on a microphone with a broken diaphragm, in a jet aircraft through an open door, twenty miles away from where said guitar is being played on to an 8 track tape machine with dodgy recording heads. However, GrimSpirit’s guitar sound is somewhat different than the waspish, buzzing, angry black metal norm because he has discovered a flanger pedal. Specifically, he discovered a Boss BF-3 flanger pedal and he turned that motherfucker up to the max! For black metal, this is dangerously innovative and he’s getting ideas above his station. Calm yourself, GrimSpirit! However, he just kept using it, and using it and using it, and therefore the whole record is undercut with a very bizarre “Whangwhangwhangwhangwhangwhang” sound at about 400bpm. This makes for an “interesting” listen. However, if you ignore GrimSpirit’s obvious and slightly worrying love and overuse of his flanger pedal this is a very good symphonic black metal record. It conjures images of icy, desolate wastelands, nocturnal and mysterious forests (sigh) and the rage of some unseen, magical predator inside my slightly damaged mind’s eye… There’s passages of blinding speed and because of the vagaries of the dementedly and determinedly low-fi production I had no way of telling whether there were any vocals at all. Saying that, it doesn’t matter in black metal because a line that is read as, “From his ancient and terrible slumber, G’Kjjfnjrui awakes to gorge on human flesh and burn down a church” always comes out as “WWWWOOOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHHH!”

Anyway, it’s a good, fun, classic symphonic black metal which was contemporary in 2004. My favourite tunes on this record are Solitude Apotheosis and The Black Heavens Open. Solitude is a gorgeously rich and atmospheric keyboard tune, dripping with menace and malice and Heavens an incredibly fast and violent piece of black metal. Even if it has flanger all over it. I have never heard a black metal record with so much flanger. Soooooo much flanging. Apart from the slightly bizarre and frankly disturbing obsession of one man and his flanger, if you like black metal you’ll like this. If you’re not a fan of black metal, I’d give it a pop, if I were you. The blurb that came with this record said, “…It’s easy to see why Evilfeast belongs alongside Burzum, Paysage D’Hiver and Midnight Odyssey.” Yes, it is. It’s in the second wave of black metal, the fashion for which was set with Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse. It’s nowhere as good as Paysage D’Hiver, though! A worthy effort.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is contemplating burning a church, but abstaining because the gendarmes are looking in his general direction and awards Evilfeast 7/10 for an interesting record. Shame about the mental flanger.

TRACKLIST (This is an Official Dark Juan Black Metal Word Salad Alert. Prepare to have your intelligence grievously insulted… Lord Belial’s The Hymn Of The Ancient Misanthropic Spirit Of The Forest is the current title holder. Can it be beaten?)

Ode To A Rising Fullmoon (A promising start. But it makes too much grammatical sense…)
Immerse Into Cold Mist (This is a good opening flurry. Makes no sense whatsoever.)
Thy Woods Are Sacred (Just fuck off with woods and forests. Try caves or abandoned asylums! Enough with the twatting woods already!)
Towards The Funeral Winternight Landscape (A formidable combination of black metal word salad and complete lack of any form of grammatical sense whatsoever. Also involves a made up word. This is good. A close competitor to Lord Belial’s classic title.)
Solitude Apotheosis (Good tune, mental title.)
Descending Winds Of Holocaust (Do winds descend? I know about downdraughts so I guess I have just answered my own question. I’m not sure they are holocaust based, though.)
The Black Heavens Open (With black rain? On a black planet? The Lord, My God Andrew Eldritch would be bleakly delighted.)
Morbid Rejoice (I beg your pardon?)
Desolate Fields Left (To the left or abandoned?)

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