Whispering Forest - Darkest Side demo III 1997

 Whispering Forest - Darkest Side demo III 1997
1) Curse
2) The Doomed
3) Untitled
4) Darkest Side
5) Green Eyes
6) I Shall Return
7) Last Sunset
8) Path of the Dead
9) Shine of Lethe
10) Black Orchid

Mediafire / Rusfolder

I thought I'd stay in the neighbouring countries and this time we're going south of the border. No, that's not Mexico, for us Finns it is a few hours on a boat (getting drunk is optional) and we arrive in Estonia from where hails this atmospheric death/doom band, the late Whispering Forest. They made (at least) four demo tapes, an album (released twice) and a demo or a self-released EP in 2001 before calling it a day. I got this rip, as well as some other Estonian items burned on a disc from comrade Veiko last year in Steelfest, thanks again! And yes, I took my sweet time getting to post this but I had a very decent excuse for at least part of the delay. Sadly I've no covers for this (if I had, things would be different!) so scans would be very much appreciated. I made a (pretty nice) placeholder "cover" for this too, but decided against posting it in case I get the actual cover scan later.

So what took so long? Simple, the tracklisting was incorrect and it's a real pain trying to figure it out with a band you're not very familiar with. Unsurprisingly, Metal Archives' entry didn't match either and Estonian Metal's was just copied from M.A. so no help there. Looks like that tracklisting completely ignored the intro/interlude tracks but it also had the songs in wrong (or different?) order. Fortunately most songs reappeared on the debut album and had lyrics available so once I got to work it wasn't as impossible as it seemed. And some of the others which did not reappear fortunately included the song title in the lyrics so it was pretty easy to guess those out. Anyways, I was still left with one untitled track, the third one which is a just below minute long interlude sort of bit. I toyed with the idea of just adding it to the title track as intro but then again the other two similar tracks were named and identified so I just left it untitled and separate in hopes of someone with a scan or at least more accurate knowledge appearing. The band's email address was naturally a dead end after all this time.

But enough of me whining about how hard I have it, let's talk about the music. It's atmospheric death/doom with gothic touches. Can I go now? Maybe a few words more, the obvious name drop is always My Dying Bride but instead of the UK folks I'm thinking about the various Czech bands like Dissolving of Prodigy, Silent Stream of Godless Elegy, Love History and what have you. Also the Norwegians The Sins of Thy Beloved comes to mind. Main voice alternates between bellowing death grunts and black metal-esque rasping croaks which is cool. The additional female vocals are, as expected, clear and ethereal and bring someone to my mind yet frustratingly I can't remember who right now!!! They're quite good, whoever it is I'm trying to think. There are some gothic touches overall but they get an extremely prominent front stage role on "Shine of Lethe" which is practically gothic metal/rock hybrid with vocals to match, unlike the album version they're male and the song is generally faster and a little "lighter" so to say. In general the versions here are refreshingly different from the later ones and the more I listen to this, the better I like it. Recommeded, especially if you enjoy atmospheric death/doom and related material. Now I want to hear the older demos too.