Album Review: Forlet Sires – Holy (Cruel Bones)

Winterthur,  Switzerland based metal outfit Forlet Sires have now released their new album, Holy via Cruel Bones.

Their unique approach on black and doom metal sets new paths in the musical landscape of heavy music in Switzerland. After their last LP  “Journey Towards Ruin” (Cruel Bones, 2017), they return with four new songs which find the band in their highest development in songwriting and creating of uneasy atmospheres.

Moody and melancholic, dark and heavy, bright and light…Holy takes us across the full spectrum of blackened doom metal. On the one hand it leaves an effective mark by being ferocity unleashed but on the other it’s a little bit progressive and a little bit post. We get all of this and much more on Carnage and Candor. Being nearly 13 minutes long, it’s a chance for Forlet Sires to really show off what they are capable of.

What they are capable of is creating some of the heaviest yet morosely addictive metal. Something that tugs hard at the soul demanding every bit of your attention. It’s very hard to not give it and more. Especially when we’ve got tracks like Where Nothing Shall Thrive. The thumping drums, fizzy feedback and roar of black metal hate is almost too much to take. The shortest track is also the most brutalising. Yet it still holds an incredible level of power in regards to off-kilter rhythms.

Dead Skin then arrives with a horrifying mix of ritualistic black bleakness and heavy doom guitars. There is no light melodies here, just 9+ minutes of a slow and methodical pummelling.

Following that we do get a subtle and quiet intro to the final track We Roam This World Alone. It slowly builds in volume but at a molasses covered pace, each note and word spoken hitting as hard as a hammer. It not only sounds great, it sounds deliciously evil. After a couple of minutes of this, the Forlet Sires we know and love rise from the murk resulting in a finale that is as strong as anything heard elsewhere but with a thickness in the black metal rhythm that just sounds epic.

Forlet Sires – Holy Full Track Listing:

1. Carnage and Candor
2. Where Nothing Shall Thrive
3. Dead Skin
4. We Roam This World Alone

The album can be picked up now over on Bandcamp.